welcome to robinsworld

For the kiddies

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:11:04 GMT

This would have been really useful for that guy at Comic Con trying to explain Cthulhu mythos to the mom and 6-year-old kid.

H/T to Liz at The Park Bench for the morning cartoonage!

Sweet fancy Moses my husband is weird

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:21:27 GMT

I think he's trying to tell me something. He just sent me the following five instant messages:
http://www.time-management-central.net/image-files/time-management-clock.jpg
http://www.freefoto.com/images/2000/02/2000_02_51---Number-Two_web.jpg
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/gifs/go-game.jpg
http://www.freefoto.com/images/2000/02/2000_02_54---Number-Two_web.jpg
http://www.mysticmedusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Suspended-Bed.jpg

I should also mention he's sitting about three feet away from me.

For your information, from the internets

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:47:43 GMT

Sal was messing around typing random things into the google search box and seeing what it suggests as common endings. Like if you type "where do" you get things like "where do babies come from" and if you type "why does it" about half the suggestions are in relation to urination and pain associated therewith.

But the best one so far: "what " yields the boring "what is twitter" and "what is my ip" but it also suggests: "what are these strawberries doing on my nipples I need them for the fruit salad."

Which sounds like a Penguinism, but is actually a book, as we found on Amazon. To continue the surrealism, for that particular book all of the "customers who viewed this item also bought" list were Berenstein Bears.

I think it's bedtime.

We're gonna be the best parents evar

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:38:36 GMT

Me: You know what I want? A strawberry donut.
Sal: Aw, if it was anything within 60 miles, I'd have gotten it for you.
Me: That's fair. But when I'm pregnant you will go buy a donut and a strawberry pie and assemble one for me and say "thank you, dear, for hosting the parasite that will one day be our child."
Sal:It's not a parasite, it's a symbiote.
Me: It's a parasite. Why else would my body violently expel it? It steals nutrients from my precious bodily fluids!
Sal:Look, it's a give-and-take relationship. You give it nutrients now, and later it gives you another member for a D&D game. It's a symbiote.
Me: ::laughing:: okay good point
Sal: ...You're blogging that, aren't you? Damn it, sometimes I'm not sure I want to end up on Sal's Shenanigans

Maybe this is why I'm not getting work done

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:45:24 GMT

I'm having another one of those weeks/months/whatever where trying to do anything feels like slogging through pudding (both physically and mentally). I was at home most of today working on my lab meeting talk for tomorrow and waiting for the maintenance guy to come by (we got fancy new toilet and shower heads), trying my hardest to concentrate. I did get a little done, but more often than not the second I started working in earnest, something like this would happen this is from the computer's eye view-- I heart Photo Booth).

In other news, this week sucks. Lousy luck abounds for me. Add that to aforementioned pudding slog and the fact that my one major accomplishment of the week was to schedule what will hopefully be my penultimate thesis committee meeting (defense being the last) for December 18, reminding me how little I've actually gotten done and causing me to wonder exactly how much crack my advisor is on if he thinks I can easily graduate next spring, and you get one thoroughly demoralized Robin.

And I still don't get an actual day off (sure, I've got fun things, but I don't have time to just sit at home and recharge my introverted little brain, catch up on to do lists and the like) until... November, actually. Turns out Sal's parents are coming into town this weekend which means it's oh-crap-clean-the-house time (after I finish the lab meeting talk and paint the cornhole set for Saturday's tailgate). I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I need a lab minion stat.

I can't believe it's been 20 years

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:34:58 GMT

I hadn't realized this year-- today actually-- is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Sal saw a commercial for tv coverage earlier this week when he was at the gym that said "20 years ago, this happened" and then went to cable snow. Honestly, that commercial would have freaked me out, because that's the main thing I remember from that day in 1989. I was home alone-- my mom and sister were at soccer practice, while I had broken my arm a month or so prior (at soccer practice, no less) and didn't feel like just watching other girls play. I was watching tv, I don't even remember what, when suddenly the cable went out. A split second later the ground began to shake violently. I don't remember much more than just being incredibly scared-- I don't remember if I was frozen to the spot or if I ran or hid or what. After the shaking stopped, I went into my parents' room to call dad at work and noticed that a stuffed monkey that usually hung from the ceiling had fallen down. When I picked up the phone, it was making a tone I hadn't heard before, probably to indicate I should not be crowding up the lines. I think I got through to dad, though I don't remember positively. After that, I picked up the stuffed monkey and got my teddy bear from my room (I think a security blanket as well) and went to sit in the front yard to wait for dad to come home.

I wasn't in any real danger. Livermore was far enough from the epicenter, and its infrastructure prepared enough. I do remember driving into the city to go to the zoo that December and seeing the houses that had collapsed sideways, and some building facades that had fallen off. It scared me to think such things were possible and random. I wouldn't say I was terribly traumatized, but I do still feel panic rise in my chest for a moment whenever the cable goes out.

Definitely going to be checking and organizing our emergency pack this week. At least it's a constructive way to use fear, right? H/T to Carol for the reminder

Best use of vocabulary in a kids' song for a cartoon

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:40:36 GMT

1. You should watch Phineas and Ferb given the chance. It's the awesome.

2. If you already watch it, you should watch the recent new episode "Quantum Boogaloo"

3. The second of three parts is below, featuring the episode's musical number, featuring (at ~2:20) Dr. Doofenshmirtz (DEInc is Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. and makes us really wonder if there's a not a techer on staff-- also there's a character named Buford which makes us more suspicious). It's 20 years in the future and he's the emperor of everything. Good times.

Doing it to myself again

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:31:33 GMT

Okay, I really should just be glad that my hair is so good at being dyed red. It's the color I want and like so that works out great for me.

Here's the problem though: I like the idea of dyeing my hair for costume reasons, but whenever I try it NEVER works. The pink/purple experiment of 2007 failed miserably, almost completely invalidating my Halloween costume. This year, I came up with the costume idea and realized that it had the advantage of requiring a hair color not my own, but within the natural spectrum: blonde. I tried it today when I got back from department retreat and... well, since my roots had grown out a fair bit there's *part* of my hair that is in fact blonde. But it doesn't seem to have affected the red part even a little! GAH!

So annoyed right now. I know it's a piddly trivial thing but I was really excited about this costume and I don't want to give up on it but I also have no idea what to try next. Do not want :p

Football blogging?

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:13:10 GMT

Had a good time at the Stanford vs UCLA game today, even if we did start tailgating at 10 and that's freaking early (I haven't gotten to sleep in since probably the 19th, and tomorrow's my only chance for at least another week). But the beer was good-- Shiner in honor of Em and her brother (who was in towm for the weekend and the reason for said tailgate) and a couple of Leinenkugel's Oktoberfest in honor of Allison (who brought both the grill and said beer)-- and the game was quite enjoyable. Even if I did have to listen to UCLA's freaking fight song nineteen thousand times. I got to see a real-life flea-flicker play, that ESPN doesn't have on its highlight reel since it didn't end in a touchdown, but was still a really good play. (And appropriate, as we discovered last night that Charm has fleas, ugh.) Also, since we won, we're currently at the top of the conference, which is really odd after the last 5 seasons.

So now I'm watching the Cal vs USC game, wch had the good taste to start an hour after our game was over. I was having trouble picking a side since, and twittered as much, leading to the exchange below (and the reason I'm posting at all right now!)

Me: Gonna pop up some popcorn and watch the USC/Cal game. I don't know who to cheer for, since I want both of them to lose.
Jenny (Stanford alum): I, for one, am rooting for the Hayward Fault

But it's been pretty sad for Cal. I mean, no score at the half? Ouch. Seeing the deflated fans on TV makes me feel a little bad. I won't on November 21 of course, but for now, having been on the getting-trounced side plenty of times, they have my sympathy.

Rest in peace, Zarkon: Cat of Death

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:53:25 GMT

No really, that's her official full name. We let Dad pick it, way back at the end of 1993 when we brought the tiny little tabby kitten who was the only female in the litter and was so cute beating the hell out of her brothers. She was so small! In hindsight we're not sure she was quite old enough to leave her litter but boy howdy were we excited to have her.

She lived a long (VERY long) and full life, got to live in two states, and has just about the best parents a cat could ask for (except for the occasional game of Sockhead perpetrated by Dad). She even managed to cohabitate with Shelby's exuberant pit-mutt for a while! She'll be missed.

Oh, and these aren't bad pictures of her, she actually did always look that annoyed. It's one of the things I liked best about her. She sure had character.

DWTS liveblogging

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:07:54 GMT

I tuned in post-HIMYM just in time to see whatshisname the Chairman from Iron Chef America, who was my prior-to-seeing-anything pick. Glad to see him paired with Lacey too, that should be fun. His number was a tad painful (really, "Kung Fu Fighting"?) but he shows promise. Like early-season Helio Castroneves.

Then some guy I don't know. Then Donny Osmond. Judges' scores notwithstanding I think he has a bit of a massive advantage with the voting pool. We got about two seconds into his number before we had to just switch to a previous performance of his that's much more entertaining to me. Good times.

Is it time for Big Bang Theory yet? I feel bad because I do like dancing, I just don't feel so much like watching DWTS this season. Not sure how I feel about another season of SYTYCD so soon after the last one (I sort of feel like it cheats Jeanine a little but mostly because Nigel was really starting to piss me off by the end of last season and I may need a longer break from him) but they're still in auditions, which I hate to watch so by the time they get to the actual dancing I might feel better. But it's entertaining enough to kill time before Castle (need. Fillion fix. now.)

They're plotting against us

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:06:53 GMT

Because we knew from the moment we met them that the cats would be difficult to keep from weaseling out doors, we constructed what we lovingly refer to as a catlock (like an airlock, but for cats). Two makeshift doors swing out and close off our front entryway and latch together.

Lately, Strange has been running into the entryway ahead of us whenever it looks like we're going somewhere. He'll sit or lie down in front of the door and look at us as if to say "where we going, guys?" It's cute and all, but we pretty much just remove him and then secure the catlock door.

This morning, we were heading to the front door to leave for work and I noticed Charm was lounging in the entryway next to the mirror. He got up as we approached and tried to slink toward the door sneakily. As we were watching the whole time, we grabbed him and set him back in the dining room, Sal latched the catlock door and I opened the front.

That's when Sal yelped, and fortunately my response was the correct one: to close the door quickly. Strange, the little bastard, used his brother as a decoy to try to get out the front door with us. While we were busy removing Charm, he hid under the card table that's folded up against the wall. It's like those scary spitting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. I don't like where this is headed.

I mean, it's all fun and games until they start refining uranium. Which one of them will do while the other rolls around on his back ~~asking for~~ demanding belly rubs as a diversion. So if you don't hear from us for a while, get ready to welcome your new tabby overlords.

That's it, I'm never going out on the porch

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:36:49 GMT

Looking out the sliding glass door with the cats just now, I noticed a largish spider has made a web from our porch railing to the roof above. She's a biggun, body probably the size of a nickel. Kind of cool to look at from the safety of my apartment (I'm a big arachnophobe-- my parents tried to break me of it in Texas by making me remove the dead carcass of this very big spider that died in our play room, but that just scarred me for life).

But it occurs to me, that between this and the dead rat we found in the folded up deck chairs we had kept out there, it's a freaking Legend of Zelda dungeon out there on my porch, and I am just not going to mess with that stuff.

Hm.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:43:11 GMT

I wasn't feeling well Saturday afternoon/evening at PAX. I was coughing a fair bit, but unproductively and painfully. I figured I was tired and dehydrated, and probably just getting too old to be spending that many hours at conventions.

Sunday I was pretty dragged out, still coughing, and hoarse. I took a lot of advil.

Monday as we left in the car for California I felt like crap. I slept a bit and felt a little more human, but my cough continued painfully all day, and my voice went through several humorous changes of timbre and volume. I've improved overall since then, but the body pain comes and goes as does my voice and painful cough.

Then today I read this (third entry down.) It seems there have been confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 in PAX attendees. Now, I'm not too freaked out, since I trust my immune system, and I really am overdue for a case of flu. I'm just not sure how to proceed. For now I plan to go into lab tomorrow morning with a large mug of tea, meet with my advisor first thing to talk about finishing up the paper for resubmission, then head up to the server room or, more optimally, home (where there is more tea and less people to infect) to work. I'm worried that's wimping out of my first day back, particularly since a) I don't know if I even have/had H1N1 or if I'm even contagious at this point, and b) I don't like making a big deal out of being sick.

But I'm already worried about to whom I may have passed *whatever it is* that I have. Sal's got his big ICRA deadline next tuesday, so he needs all his faculties. Knowing a little something about microbiology, I was super careful not to touch my nose or mouth before touching shared game controllers or board game pieces, and I was constantly smelling of alcohol hand sanitizer. I just hope I did enough. It didn't occur to me that I might have something more than simple geek flu (of course, I'm still dubious about exactly how serious H1N1 is in the scheme of flus-- my sister-in-law has it, for instance, and it sounds pretty much like the plain old, suffer-through-it flu).

Anyway, an excuse to angst I suppose. It was still the most kickass awesome holy-cow-fun vacation, and I'm glad we went and I wish I didn't have actual life to return to. But dammit, I'm back to barely being able to speak, and aching skin. BAH to germs, I say.

I'm not going anywhere with this.

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:33:35 GMT

Another week has gone by without an update. I'm so busy, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I do have a couple things to blog about, just nothing of great consequence.

We finished Avatar: the Last Airbender, and it was very good-- I was relieved the ending didn't ruin the whole series (though I might have written that last scene a little differently). Also I got some new LJ icons.

I'm thinking of buying David Bazan's new album (he who was known as Pedro the Lion), since I read it falls sort of neatly into a lot of the thoughts I've been having. Then again, I don't know how depressing the album is-- I probably don't need more mopey music.

We're heading to PAX as of Thursday, which will be nice. We haven't quite decided when we're heading back, as we're driving with Joe, so no Ricky I still don't know when we're going to be in Portland, sorry about that.

Roombas are pretty nifty-- we borrowed Kim and Mike's (his name is Herbert II) since we finally managed to tidy the dining/living room and our vacuum cleaner is sort of useless. Strange was intrigued, though we couldn't get him to ride the Roomba. Charm hid under the couch, which would have been okay except that at one point I realized we couldn't see the Roomba, and it turned out it was trapped under the couch with the poor freaked out spaz-cat.

Work goes on. There are a lot of loose ends I need to deal with but I decided just to finish the two or three things I can before leaving for Seattle. I'll organize myself and get straight back to work next week.

We have not been able to locate a copy of Tetris DS, which I lost along with my DSi a while back. I sort of assumed Tetris was one of those things everyone would carry at all times, particularly given the type of cross-genre marketing the DS has seen. But I guess I was wrong, and it freaks me out. I've dug through four stores worth of crappy licensed games, and fifteen thousand "imagine" titles for girls. A couple of the stores didn't even have Super Mario Brothers or MarioKart, though at least the other two had those staples, if nothing else. What is the world coming to? And by that I mean, why doesn't the world play by the rules I think it ought to?

Yeah, that's about it. Like I said, nothing of consequence. Maybe there'll be a gamer-stuff update at some point, but I'm not holding my breath for it. I forgot how much I like pickles.

This has got to stop

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:04:03 GMT

I go to log into LJ this morning, and what am I faced with?

That is not a link so don't bother trying.

A world of eeeeeewwwww.

Been a while

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:28:44 GMT

And it'll be a while longer yet. Things have been very busy and overwhelming and even occasionally fun, but there has been little time for blogging. A few things before returning to silence:

We're heading to the California Academy of Sciences to celebrate our anniversary. Why yes, we're dorks, why do you ask? Nothing says romance like taxidermied beasties, a planetarium and an albino crocodile!

Our Netflix queue is amusing-- nothing but Avatar: the Last Airbender and Torchwood season 2. Speaking of Torchwood, WOW is season 2 better than season 1, and we're only two episodes in. Now, I might be a taaaaad biased because James Marsters arrived in full crazypants malevolent british accenty sex-and-violencey goodness.... Okay, I'm definitely biased.

Nope, still haven't published. Theoretically we're resubmitting when Advisor gets back from Hawaii, or so I'm told.

The grad student that was overseeing my worm work... left. As in, moved away. So I still have the whole rest of his lab around, but it's kind of odd to be more or less on my own in an entirely new set of protocols

Uh, I had something else but I forgot. So I guess we should hit the road so we don't miss the penguin feeding :)

YES. THIS.

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:46:30 GMT

I want to do Sarah Haskins' taxes for free for ever and ever. Sal does too. The awesome never ceases, but this one is particularly good.

OMG SYTYCD

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:01:11 GMT

I didn't liveblog since I'm worn out on bloggery in general (also I'm two weeks behind).

BUT SWEET FANCY MOSES the women's group dance tonight? Made of awesome with badass-sauce! The costumes, the attitudes, the concept... yeah, I want to do choreographer Sonia's taxes for free in perpetuity. [Will post video when I find it]

Honestly, I was worried when I heard they were going to do gender group routines-- previously when they've done that in the finals, the men got some awesome hilarious routine (see: Travis and Benjie's nerdcore, last season's Russian folk number) and the women got something weird or boring (Heidi and Donyelle's lackluster broadway, Sabra and Lacey's way-stylized "we are foxes or something" routine). So I was annoyed that Lil C came down on them for not being good enough (not to mention Nigel's thinly-veiled reference to Jeanine's breasts as her superpower). Whatever. The dance was fantastic, and got my waning-after-two-hours attention in full. Moar plz.

I tell him over and over that he's funny...

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:20:39 GMT

...but still Sal worries. He was brave enough to go up to the microphone during the "Mad Science: The Science Behind Science Fiction" panel on Thursday, since there had been much talk of robots and consciousness, which is within his area of expertise. I thought he was delightful and witty, and got a good laugh from the audience, but throughout the weekend he kept asking me if he had sounded dumb or anything. Well, I think this constitutes definitive proof.

I also note that he's the only non-celebrity on that list. Other Sal mentions here as well.

And yes, I am posting this so I can bookmark it and pull it up next time he's feeling insecure. Because he has no reason for insecurity! Too much awesome!

SDCC day 4 and some stuff

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:06:34 GMT

This is very late, I know. I wanted nothing more than to sleep Sunday night, then got a ride to the airport from Megan and figured I'd have time to post once we got through security. Well, we'd gotten through and miraculously had gotten seats in the Southwest terminal (which has VERY little seating given how many people go through it each day) when we heard an alarm and were told to evacuate back to the street. Thrilling, let me tell you. We were eventually told (officially) it was a fire alarm, and heard a further rumor that it had been a trash can fire, so awesome.

Once back in San Jose we had to catch a bus and a train and then walk the remaining few blocks home, but it was nice to get there. The cats were very happy to see us (still are-- Charm's purring up a storm in my lap right now, and Strange thought it'd be an awesome idea to wake me up purring in my face at 4:45 this morning.

Anyway, until I've recovered a few more functioning brain cells, I'll leave you with some pictures and day 4!

This morning. Well, we got home around 11:30 last night, and set our alarms for 5am. Except I accidentally set mine for Mon-Fri, and our host shut hers down and went back to sleep. We eventually rose from the grave around 6:15 and were out the door by 7 (we had meant to leave by 6, but... yeah.) Still, we got good parking and scurried off to get in the Ballroom 20 line yet again, not wanting to take any chances that we might miss out on Doctor Who! We were in line by 8:15, and while there were plenty of people ahead of us, there was no doubt we'd get decent seats, which was a nice feeling after days of wondering if we'd be able to see things. Also a nice feeling? Recovering my camera at Lost&Found!

So, the panel. First of all, David Tennant is every bit as skinny as he looks on Doctor Who, possibly skinnier. Second, they immediately addressed the rampant rumor that they were going to announce a Doctor Who movie; they are not. However, Julie Gardner says, the strength of and response to the rumor has made them think it might not be a bad idea!

They showed a teaser reel for the last 10th Doctor specials, which included glimpses of Donna and her grandfather, the Ood, and, somehow, the Master! Who knows how that works, but it took up all our dinner conversation trying to figure out where he might have come from.

There was a lot of discussion of the finale and the new doctor, mostly because there was the distinct feeling that the fans need some reassuring. They told us the finale is quite the tear-jerker, but that we should have faith that after a few episodes we'll all be full-fledged Doctor Eleven fans.

Other tidbits. A man from the Guinness book of world records arrived to award Doctor Who a plaque for being the most successful show ever on TV. David Tennant loves Firefly and Serenity but his brown coat isn't an homage, he just really wanted to wear a long coat.

They ended the panel with a clip from "Water of Mars," which looks pretty creepy. It also ended with a scene of the Doctor saying "I don't hear anyone knocking!" followed by four loud knocks on the metal door. One of my party pointed out that the Doctor was told by the psychic "your song is ending... he will knock four times" so we're very curious now!

Uninterested in American Dad we hit the show floor one last time, miraculously just in time to score a Doctor Who swag bag at the BBC booth! I'd been trying all week to get one! After sleeping through my alarm, getting pulled over and interrogated to make sure I'm actually who my badge says, and being yelled at to roll up my pants cuffs before getting on the escalator, I figure recovering my camera and getting a Who bag more than make up for it!

After wandering the floor a bit more, looking for end-of-show sales and giveaways, and deciding we were pretty much ComicConned out, we headed back up to Ballroom 20 to snag seats for the afternoon panels. We sat through short panels for a few indie movies, during which I promptly fell asleep, folded over in my chair (a fun way to make up, lemme tell you. Sal says Alien Trespass looks like could be pretty good. It's an attempt to recreate a 50's-style sci-fi). The BBC is clever, and realized they had our undivided attention prior to the Torchwood panel, so they took that opportunity to push a new show called Being Human, about a vampire, werewolf and ghost living in Bristol (a drama, though, not a sitcom or anything). The director explained that the original concept for the show had been about humans: a recovering sex addict, a man dealing with anger issues, and an agoraphobic, but the idea didn't take off until they realized it could be translated into a more supernatural context. Interesting enough that I'll certainly give it a try. Also the young actors were adorably excited to be there-- one even asked us to do a "Mexican Wave" (British for The Wave) so he could film it, and was very excited when we immediately complied.

What can be said about the Torchwood panel? Granted, I'm not the most eloquent person, and as a scientist my communication skills often leave much to be desired, but how does one adequately describe John Barrowman? Every inch a showman, a larger-than-life personality (he actually throws his head back to laugh, which I find endearing), happiest in front of an adoring crowd, and incapable of avoiding saying anything dirty even when he tries.

I will avoid spoilers here, as I actually haven't seen all of Children of Earth yet either. However, I will say that probably 50% of the panel was spent talking about Ianto (at the first mention of the name, Barrowman ducked under the table), and at least 50% of shouts from the audience were Ianto-supportive (the other 50% were mostly "we love you!" and "you're hot!"). Another 10-15% of the panel was spent worrying that people won't like Captain Jack anymore after the events of Children of Earth, though the crowd noise convinced them that things might be okay after all.

Like the Doctor Who panel in the morning, this one ended too soon, but John Barrowman seemed just as reluctant to end it as we were. He stood on his chair to wave goodbye. But we had the Buffy sing-a-long to look forward to, so that softened the blow a little. Not only that, but we were able to move up to the front section of seats with a great view of the screen.

Having been energized by caffiene and Barrowman, we were very excited to finally participate in an event like this-- we missed all the previous ones, and then the network got all snooty and decided nobody should have them. Volunteers passed out commemorative buttons, prop parking tickets (with fines for things like "Parking on the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' Sign"), and little rubber monster finger puppets appropriate for "grr, argh"ing. I hadn't watched the episode in a long time, but it was the one that got me into Buffy when I was in college so all sorts of warm fuzzies there. And it's so much fun to sing! We didn't have actors performing the parts onstage like Rocky Horror or the original OMWF shows, but it was still hugely entertaining. Boy, can Anthony Stewart Head sing!

It was a really lovely way to end the con for me, on-- literally-- a high note. Even though I'm sad it's over, I am exhausted and have a giant pile of swag to sort through in an effort to get everything onto the airplane with me. Not to mention several pages of quotes to writeup and a memory card full of pictures to sort and upload. Thanks to our wonderful blogmistress, and to all of you for letting me share this experience-- I'm neurotic enough that I always need to feel like I'm doing something constructive, and being able to act as correspondent fit the bill and then some!

P.S. Pre-registration is already open for next year. Just, you know, for your information.

As an additional note, all of this has been crossposted at The Park Bench, where they've been kind enough to let me write for them (and tolerated my minimal edit time) and have said lots of nice things, so I feel all useful :) day 0, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4.

SDCC day 3, still less than 24 hours late!

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:54:20 GMT

Okay, I'm not as young as I used to be. This crazy kid stuff is finally catching up with me (wow, two whole days later!) The feet are starting to give out, the back is not tolerating folding chairs well, and I nearly fell asleep during the Green Lantern panel. But I soldier on for YOU! Also for maybe possibly getting pictures of interesting celebrities. And because Doctor Who isn't until tomorrow.

It's lucky there wasn't anything to rush into a line for this morning, since we were not moving rapidly. One of our wonderful hosts, who only had a one-day pass for yesterday, offered to drop us off to save the hassle of parking and walking. The Hall H line was once again insane, though it's unclear if that's for the first panel of the day (Lost) or for the later big-ticket ones (Iron Man 2 followed by Kevin Smith). Either way, we weren't going anywhere near it.

The first major score was that we finally tracked down people handing out the GIANT Mythbusters bags (because I need almost-life-sized Adam and Jamie following me around). Mostly it was for Sal, who is a mechanical engineer and I figure he can cary tools around in it or robots or something. Also it took some of the load off our backpack and allowed it to be split between us.

The morning was spent fairly leisurely, strolling around the exhibit hall, taking pictures of interesting costumes (today was the steampunk meetup so there were lots of good ones there, even a set of steampunk ghostbusters, which blew the needle off the fandom meter) and random celebrities. There was also the little game Adam Savage of Mythbuster fame started-- he said he was on the show floor somewhere, but in costume with a full head mask, and dared people to try to find him and take a picture with him. We thought we had him, but sadly no. He wasn't found until 5PM by one clever and/or lucky fan. It was a fun chase though, even if a lot of people in full body/face costumes got stalked a bit.

We stopped by to see an impromptu performance by MC Frontlot at the Penny Arcade booth. It certainly amused me to see him rapping into a megaphone, with his drummer tapping away on a little electronic drum kit. Later, on the webcomic theme, we went to visit Jorge Cham of Piled Higher and Deeper fame. He taught a couple of Sal's classes at Caltech, and Sal eventually TAed for him, AND Sal joined the same lab in which Jorge did his PhD work.

With nothing really in particular to do, we headed up to one of the smaller rooms where we caught the end of a panel on cartoon voice-overs, which was interesting enough that we wished we had seen the whole thing. After that was the panel for Green Lantern: Blackest Night which is this biggish crossover event they're just starting up (I have to say ish because it doesn't come anywhere close to the scale of DC's other recent endeavors). Sal's got a soft spot for Green Lantern and I was a little intrigued by the way they're dealing with a whole spectrum of Lantern colors, so I was thinking of picking it up. Sadly, the panel was a bit of a non-panel. Almost all questions were answered with "we can't answer that, you'll just have to keep reading," which I'm told is DC's favorite answer to everything. In fairness, they were pretty detailed questions about nuances I didn't know anything about, so I wouldn't have gained any information if they had given straight answers, but nevermind that. I just felt it necessary to detail this one because it was one of only two actual comic panels we went to at, you know, Comic Con.

We made a half-hearted attempt to see if there was any room at the Iron Man panel, but between that and the Kevin Smith panel following it, there was no way we were getting in. So we wandered a bit more, and found an impromptu Doctor Who costume party-- there was a whole pack of various Doctors, along with a few companions and a couple of Masters as well. The pair dressed as the Doctor and Rose from Idiot's Lantern were amazing-- her dress was spot-on and he looked exactly like David Tennant. In fact, we were careful to make sure he wasn't in fact Tennant, since really the best possible way to hide at Comic Con would probably be to dress up as your own character! I got several pictures, but... well I'll get to that.

Not wanting to get shut out of yet another evening's entertainment, we moved into the hall where the Mythbusters would, eventually, be. This of course involved a) NOT getting in line for the showing of Children of Earth and Planet of the Dead, and b) sitting through the two panels prior to the Mythbusters. The first was the pilot episode of a show called Human Target, which was actually semi-interesting (Tricia Helfer was on it, though she's not a regular, and it involved a fancy train, so I watched.) The second... well... the second was for "The Vampire Diaries." Now, I know some people are really into Twilight, and I'm the last person who should complain about vampire shows. That being said, Twilight doesn't do it for me in the least, and in fact a lot of its themes creep the stuffing out of me (again, I may do a semipost or something on the whole "Twilight ruined Comic-Con" controversy since I think there are a lot more issues involved than simply the quality or lack thereof of the books and movies, but getting into it here would take too long!). And as far as I can tell, this show is a stale Twilight ripoff, except no sparkling, and the lead vampire looks like David Boreanaz instead of Cedric Diggory. Plus, because of the bad planning, most of the people in the hall were there for the Mythbusters-- we were not what you'd call a friendly audience. Fortunately nobody was rude during Q&A, but there were lots of snide comments in our section.

Having survived that, it was time for the Awesome. The Mythbusters were great, though it was mostly their interaction with each other and the audience that made it so special, rather than any particular information. So await the quotes update, and my apologies for the cop-out. The best news was that there will be an entire episode next season on duct tape myths. Also, the rocket sled will make a return, but for slicing instead of flattening this time, which makes me a tad giddy since the first rocket sled episode was so awesome. Further, there may be a third rocket car episode at some point, since the makers of rocket car II's exploding-on-launch rockets donated two more for another attempt. So good news all around. Also, Kari Byron had her baby last week, after 42 hours of labor.

I should probably note what we missed by choosing Mythbusters over Torchwood/Doctor Who. Now, in fairness, it was listed as airings of the episodes and I knew I could see them on BBC America when I get home, and Sal's an engineer, and it seemed like the right thing to do. On several occasions we heard screams and cheers from that room, separated from ours by a thinnish partition, but we assumed it was just standard "someone we like just came on screen" cheering. No. Russel T. Davies, John Barrowman AND David Tennant showed up. And, well... let's go to the video...

Finally, we watched a bit of the famous Masquerade, which is not so much a party as it is a costume show where entrants put on little skits or dances to show off their handiwork. It apparently requires many hours of waiting in line to get in, so I figured it must be a big deal, but they broadcast it to a few other rooms as well to make it easy for us to see it. Some of the costumes were quite impressive, others less flashy, some focussed on the performance (like a performance "Freeze Ray" from Dr. Horrible as it would be on Broadway). Some other highlights were She-Ra and cohorts performing "Womanizer" by Britney Spears in order to teach Skeletor a lesson, a skit that involved costumes from many cultures first dancing as "It's a Small World" and then to "Thriller," and a skit introduced as "Rainbow Brit and the Color Kids" that ended up being the Joker, Riddler and Poison Ivy taking over the show. And we were only there for the first 45 minutes or so of a 2+ hour show. I'd certainly watch again, but I don't think I'd wait in line for many hours to see it live.

And, oh yeah, sometime between "Vampire Diaries" and Mythbusters I managed to leave my camera somewhere. See, when one panel ends there's a window of about two minutes where the people who only cared about that panel leave and people camping out for the next panel can claim them. I guess we moved too fast and had too much junk to carry and it got left behind. Boo.

Postscript, since I'm only just now, Sunday night, catching up: this turned out alright, we visited Lost&Found this morning and there it was! Apparently between the good will of fellow nerds and the fact that it's ANCIENT nobody thought to run off with it! So hopefully I'll have a picasa album set up in the nearish future as well as a quote post :)

SDCC day 2 - now with super extra verbosity!

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:11:08 GMT

Quick note: I either had no wifi signal or no battery most of the day, so I have lots of paper notes. However, most of them are quotes, so I may do a quote compilation at the end of the con to avoid posting all the funny things people said here. Also: general warning that I'm highly pro-Whedon, so if I get fangirly feel free to ignore me!

Funny/random anecdote of the day: Seeing a woman dressed as Starbuck holding a Frappachino from Starbucks. (Okay, *I* thought it was hilarious, but I'm weird).

Up at 6, which actually wasn't as bad as it could have been-- compared to the people who went to one of the MANY parties hosted last night by various corporate entities that have a stake in the Comic-Con clientele.

I don't know if it has to do with the sheer number of people trying to access it, but my wireless signal was more or less nonexistent all day. So very little live-tweeting, which really would have been nice. And then I got signal during Joss's panel just in time for my battery to run out. Boo hiss.

We made it downtown at a decent hour. I'm sorry, I should be more specific. In this context "decent" means "the timing was decent for actually getting a parking spot within walking radius of the convention center," not "a reasonable hour at which humans should be awake." The Hall H line was NOTHING compared to yesterday; apparently Warner Brothers doesn't have the pull of Robert Pattison. We were shepherded into a long queue for our home-away-from-home, Ballroom 20. This being San Diego it was actually sort of lovely to sit outside for a bit reading Pride and Predjudice and Zombies.

Anyway, we were eventually herded into Ballroom 20, where seat selection was crucial-- after all, we knew we were going to be there for a while. Again, since they don't clear out rooms between panels, it's pretty important to get into a room early. Today we got lucky that almost all of the panels had at least something we were interested in. As soon as we got seats, I snagged a bathroom pass (seriously, they actually have a hall-pass system, it's the only way to get back in if you need to exit for any reason during a panel) and ran down to the exhibit floor where it was nothing but bad news: the line for the giant Doctor Who bags at the BBC booth was around the whole sector, AND the Big Bang Theory cast signing overlapped with Dollhouse. We wanted to get our college quantum physics textbook signed by everyone, but sadly it was not to be.

First panel: Stargate Universe. To hear the head guys talk about it, it's both totally a new and different show (for people who have not watched either SG1 or Atlantis) and very similar to the old one (for people who liked it). Funny, that. I may have to give it a try though, it looks at least entertaining. Sort of Voyager-esque, take that how you will, involving a bunch of people getting stranded on one side of a stargate and having to "reinvent the wheel" as the tagline goes.

Second panel: BSG/Caprica. Woo! Ron and Dave, with Jane Espenson, who was wearing a Caprica shirt, Esai Morales, who plays Joseph Adama on Caprica, and Edward James Olmos (buy the Blu-Ray!). Apparently Ron Moore was both in the high school marching band AND the quarterback. Aside from the cultural disparity, Sal pointed out that halftime must have been difficult for him. Olmos (seriously, buy BSG on blu-ray) was just great the whole time (not quite as manic as I've seen him (if you haven't seen the video of him getting the whole UN panel chanting "so say we all!" you must go do so now). He talked about his revelation that if you watch Blade Runner immediately after the BSG finale, they fit perfectly, since he's in both and they're ideologically similar. Espenson talked about how hard it was to make The Plan since it had to be entirely consistent with what we already know-- it took SEVEN MONTHS to edit. Olmos added that watching The Plan "you will freak out. This will keep you busy for the next three years. Don't forget to buy the blu-ray!" They brought out Grace Park partway through, which was very cool. They got Esai Morales to do his EJO voice, which he did, then turned to Olmos and grabbed his head, shouting "aw, my baby!" Ron Moore actually uses the word "frak" in conversation, which rules. Finally, the moderator gave all the panelists one last sentence. Olmos's? "Blu-ray." In that way that only he can say it. Caprica will start airing January 22, 2010

Third Panel: the Big Bang Theory. This panel was just a lot of fun. Johnny Galecki-- well, I'd say he "cleans up good" except he was all scruffy in that trendy way. I was disappointed that nobody asked anything about the science on the show. It seems it's really hard to get in line fast enough to get to ask your question, but I was hoping to get a Caltech name-check in (go beavers!), and I really did want to hear about who writes all the technobabble, given that so far it's been accurate enough so as to not piss off any of my scientist friends. But barring that it was a hilarious show-- Jim Parsons talked about how the "rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock" speech was much harder to do than any of his long sciencey spiels-- apparently his 9 or 10 tries are all on the DVD.

Fourth panel: 24. I don't watch the show, but everyone else in the world does. I have no idea if there was any new or interesting information. But Katee Sackhoff was there, so I'm satisfied. She dressed up all girly, which she always seems to do-- dunno if Starbuck was just really out of character for her or if she's trying to not get constantly cast as Starbuck. She did make several comments about how she hopes she gets to perpetrate some violence on the show at some point, but she hasn't yet (those quotes will show up if/when I do a compilation). They talked a bit about next season, how the theme is "peace" which is kind of a new thing for them. The threat involves an attack on a UN conference headed by the Presidents of Iran and the US.

Fifth panel: Bones. Sadly, David Boreanaz (or, as the teenagers next to me called him, Angel) couldn't be there as his wife is 34 months pregnant and he doesn't want to be over two hours away when she goes into labor. He did send a long, rambley apology video though, mostly making fun of Hart Hanson, the show creator who WAS present. But as a fan, I thought Emily Deschanel and Hanson carried it just fine (some friends I was with who have never seen it were bored since they only came for Boreanaz, so I'm probably biased). Most of the panel seemed to be spent justifying last season's finale-- a good portion of the audience was unthrilled with it (there was a bit of a bait-and-switch about whether the two leads would end up together). Hanson asked how many people thought Booth and Brennan should get together, there was much cheering, to which I muttered "go watch the last season of Moonlighting and get back to me." However, he then asked who thought they should not, and there was probably an equal amount of cheering, so maybe there's hope after all. Deschanel did her "dancing phalanges" move, which is priceless, and they discussed how she was actually forced into singing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" in one episode, since it was in the only pre-writer's-strike version of the script, so they literally could not change it. Speaking of which, Cyndi Lauper was very excited about that episode and ended up doing a guest spot in the next season as Angela's psychic.

Sixth/seventh panel: JOSS. First thing's first: we got to see the fabled thirteenth episode of Dollhouse season 1, that was originally meant to air between the last two episodes because Joss is cruel and likes to draw out tension like that, but fortunately cooler heads prevailed. Though I think it would have been bad to air it then, I do think it was a VERY good episode with an AMAZINGLY GOOD child actor (Adair Tischler, who you might remember as Molly from Heroes). I don't think I could say anything about the episode without spoiling, though I will say it is not crucial to season 1, but it takes place beyond the continuity we knew about. It'll be on the DVD, but it was cool to get to see it now.

Most of the rest of the panel was Joss being hilarious, which is much better expressed as a list of quotes. I'll just detail a few key awesome things, though. First of all, if you didn't know Joss has a habit of having recreational Shakespeare readings at his house with all our favorite Jossverse actors. How much would I pay to be in on just one?! Anyway, he said that's how he was inspired to cast Alan Tudyk, since though Tudyk plays goofy so well, he did such a job with the part of Julius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra that Joss realized he'd be great for the part. The Shakespeare theme was also continued, with an English teacher asking if the planet names Ariel and Miranda mean anything in Serenity and Joss admitting that no, they just sound cool. "I named a character Illyria," he said, "I'm the laziest man alive." This Shakespeare geek was pleased.

We were promised Alexis Densiof sightings in season 2, and possibly "a little Glau" as well. And though no dates or actual information are available, there is a musical from the Dr. Horrible writers in the vague future sometime. Also, for horror fans, Joss's Cabin in the Woods trailer is now live. I'm a huge movie wimp so I probably will not get involved in that.

Finally, we attempted to get into the RiffTrax Live presentation, but like last night's ill-fated sing-a-long, it was not meant to be. The room was too small, not enough people vacated the room from the previous panel and the line was closed off in front of us...it's proven very difficult to get into our desired panels at Comic-Con without getting in line crazy early.

SDCC day 1

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:41:44 GMT

The Penguin claims my last update had too many words. Then boy howdy is she going to hate this one!

Day 1:

So it seems arriving at 8:30 for a 10am opening is far FAR too late. We had to park several blocks away and walk, though it was pretty easy to get our bearings by following the costumed people.

The friend I'm staying with had a coworker who had arrived at 1:45am to get in the Twilight line, and she estimated there were somewhere between 500 and 800 people ahead of her, depending on how many of them were saving seats. Yikes. We walked a bit farther back to see if we could find the back of the line-- see, the Twilight panel wasn't until 1:45, but if you want to see anything before it in that room you have to be in the same line. Failing to even find the back of the line we gave up on seeing the morning's Disney 3D panel and headed back to the exhibit floor to wander a bit. It was even more crowded and disorienting than last night, and the people in costumes tend to cause huge traffic jams as large crowds gather to take pictures. We failed, by 10 or 15 people, to get one of the giant Doctor Who bags BBC America was giving out, but we were able to see Julie Benz (from a distance-- she was signing at the Dexter booth which had a GIANT line, but it was still nice to point and say "look! it's Darla!" And, thanks to a strategic text message from my much-more-experienced friend, we got our tickets to the Dr. Horrible signing event on Saturday (the whole Whedon clan will be there). So, yay, we get Joss Whedon's autograph! Also, great, now we can worry for 48 hours about whether we'll sound like asses in front of Joss Whedon. I HATE that about being a nerd.

I'm having trouble identifying a lot of the costumes I'm seeing, probably because I'm not into Manga or most anime. Hold on, there's a flexing Superman across the hall. He is ROCKING those tights. Maybe I shouldn't try to write these updates from the floor. There is a group (all of whom are in very good shape, damn them) of DCers (Supergirl, Batgirl, Batman and Green Arrow) that are quite good, and the scattered member of the 501st legion is always fun to see. Saw an adorable couple with their baby in a stroller, all dressed in steampunk regalia. I rather enjoyed spotting Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable later in the evening. And LOTS of Dr. Horribles and Captain Hammers (not to mention Groupies)-- a good portion of whom didn't even get a spot in the sing-a-long (more on that later).

Another custom of which I was not aware: the "free hugs" sign. Seems to this Ohioan-raised, non-touchey microbiologist a good way to transmit disease, but they seem to enjoy themselves so who am I to tell them otherwise? There's a lot of that though, the "well, that's not my particular cup of tea, but have at it yourself" vibe. Oh, and one good parody I saw was a guy dressed as Nacho Libre with a sign that said "Free Pile Drives to the Face."

Afternoon was mostly panels. It was nice to sit down. In order to claim seats for the "Women Power Icons" panel we arrived early to the previous one, for "Quantum Quest," an animated 3D movie that uses data and images from the Cassini mission. It has crazy star power (no pun intended, seriously) though only a few actors were present (Robert Picardo, notably) ; they joked that since they got Chris Pine, William Shatner, James Earl Jones and Hayden Christensen (who actually slightly got booed) they managed to have two Kirks and two Vaders. Anyway it does look pretty, and I do like science, so we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

The Women Icons panel was pretty cool, though honestly they should have just had Sigourney Weaver by herself. No offense to Eliza Dushku, Zoe Saldana, or Elizabeth Mitchell but come on, Sigourney Weaver. She mentioned that MTV recently ranked Ripley the second biggest badass, after Clint Eastwood, but, as she says "I think she could take him." To much applause.

I caught the spotlight panel with Gail Simone, which was cool for me, and one of the few actual comic-related things we've done so far. I love her writing-- she's done a lot, but her current big project is Wonder Woman which RULES. Sadly, comic fanperson questions are much more uncomfortable-- lots of continuity minutiae and iffy social skills.

Next was the "putting the science in science fiction" panel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Jane Espenson, as well as writers and science advisors from Eureka and Fringe were there discussing how you fit science into stories without sacrificing either. I got a reply tweet that there was too much plugging, which may be true, I just like listening to people like that talk, it's a weakness.

Right after that (actually a little before it ended) we scurried off to the line for the Dr. Horrible sing-a-long. Yeah, about that. For some inexplicable reason they put it in one of the smaller ballrooms, while something about superhero kung-fu smackdown got the bigger one (and we just checked, it's not full at all). Even though last year they ended up using THREE rooms. So we missed the cut by FAR. I pulled out my laptop, which conveniently had the DVD in it, and held it up over the dispersing crowd-- a few people gathered around and we tried to salvage our evening, but without sound (even with closed captions) it just wasn't going to happen.

So, on the bright side, I have time to write this update. On the less-bright side, I can hear all the people inside singing and laughing and having fun. Boo. Note to self: get to the Buffy sing-a-long three days early. I'd better close up though, some people might leave before the showing of Commentary! the Musical so we *might* get in.

Postscript: we did get in :) And Zach, Maurissa and Jed were there at the end to thank us and assure us that more is coming! Yay!

SDCC day 0

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:21:09 GMT

I'm sending reports to The Park Bench from Comic Con, so I'll just post what I send here and save a bit of time ;) The only thing I left out was how the shuttle from the airport magically takes you right to the Yardhouse (that place with like 100 beers on tap), and we just happened to have 3 hours to kill. Our waitress was extremely nice and didn't mind how slowly we were drinking.

So, to the update!

I am a first-time Comic Con attendee, so I honestly didn't know what to expect. And having just gotten back from preview night, I'm not sure I could adequately sum it up for five-hours-ago me.

Imagine Las Vegas, but with TV networks, comic publishers, and geek supply stores instead of the various sizes of casinos. Video game kiosks instead of slot machines, racks of dice instead of bars, and the show girls are dressed as Heroes cheerleaders. Now cram all of that nerdvana-Vegas into one room. Okay, it's a GIANT room, but it's all sharing the same air.

And then add people. A SEA of them. But I do admit to a certain feeling of being among "my people" unlike the "Stranger in a Strange Land" feeling I get in actual Las Vegas. Since it's only preview night we only saw a few costumes-- the kid from Kingdom Hearts, Rufio from Hook (yeah, didn't expect to see that one), and a girl-- I kid you not-- dressed as a TARDIS. I didn't figure out what she was until it was too late to ask for a picture, unfortunately, but I hope to be more on the ball the rest of the week.

As for personal experiences, my husband Sal and I were very excited to achieve one of our major Con goals within 10 minutes of entering the building. After a brief stop at the California Browncoats booth (at which Sal purchased a tshirt with two dinosaurs that says "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!) we got the guys from Penny Arcade to sign my Dungeon Master's Guide. Yes, that probably pegged the geek meter, but we only just started playing-- none of my group had played before I heard the podcast Penny Arcade posted of them playing the then-new D&D 4th edition. Gabe even drew his character Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) on the front page. So I was pleased with myself. We even got to chat a bit, and I didn't say anything stupid to the semi-famouse people I think are awesome, so big score there.

Most of the rest of the evening was spent standing in what we assumed were lines, and were in fact lines about 75% of the time. Free STUFF was everywhere, as well as way too much awesome non-free stuff (we counted ourselves lucky to escape with three tshirts and $10 worth of new gaming dice). The bigger booths were things like DC and Marvel, Warner Brothers, Nickelodeon, that sort of thing, but there were tons of smaller booths for independent comic shops and various geek-related hobbies (two separate booths selling corsets, not sure how to react to that). Basically, if you're reading this, there was something for you there. And the free stuff ranged from giant bags in which to carry your other free stuff to single issues of various comics, promotional materials (got a lovely Doctor Who postcard from BBC America), and just generally useful things (like a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies poster). And for some reason wind-up chattering teeth from Warner Brothers (I *think* it's a promotion for their Arkham Asylum game but really who doesn't need chattering teeth?)

Only a few Famous Person sightings-- the whole cast of The Guild was signing at their booth, so a b

*welcome to robinsworld*