Yesterday was such a "meh!" day. Thursday was my Comic-Con day. I needed to hook up with Richard and Wendy of Elfquest fame, to discuss the upcoming web revamp. And I was taking my brother Dana to see the con for the first time. We left Anaheim at around 7:20 am and get on the 5 Freeway. Going ok, until we're about to get to San Onofre. Then the traffic stops. And stops. And stops.....

4 hours later, we finally get to the reason why the traffic had been throughly killed. At 5:09am, a Vons grocery truck was driving along when it hit a mini-van that was parked on the side of the road. It had been in an accident earlier and was unoccupied, but going 65+MPH, it created quite the mess. The big rig slammed into the van, tossing it up the hill about 30 feet, then rolled a couple of times before the gas tanks finally burst into flames. The driver got out before it went up fortunately. However, the fire from the tanks lit the brush on the side of the road and ended up burning 4 acres of brush and torched the mini-van.

When we finally got to the accident, around 11:30am, 4 hours after we left on a 2 hour drive, traffic was still pretty much reduced to one lane.

Yes, that's one lane, with rush hour traffic from L.A. to San Diego AND people coming down for the first day of the San Diego Comic-Con.

All told, it took about 5 1/2 hours to get to San Diego. I was only able to spend about an hour at the convention cause we had to be back in Anaheim for a dinner appointment. I did get to hook up with Richard and Wendy. That was pretty much it.

The only GOOD thing that happened all day was being able to finally hit up the In-N-Out. I sooooooo needed a 4x4 after all that driving.

Hope everyone else had a better day.

 

This is being blasted across the Intarweb and the Blogosphere, so I figured I'd pass it along.

This was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

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Elves gather at Warners
Rawson Thurber to write, direct, produce comic adaptation
By Borys Kit
July 9, 2008, 01:00 AM ET


"Elfquest," the cult comic by Wendy and Richard Pini, is heading to the big screen courtesy of Warners Bros. and Rawson Thurber.

Thurber will write, direct and produce the feature, whose format is undetermined.

The original comic, which the Pinis initially self-published starting in 1978, followed a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders in their attempts to survive and link with other dispersed elves on an Earth-like planet with two moons while on the lookout for tribes of humans and trolls, both of which acted as allies and enemies.

The series -- which at certain points in its history was published by both Marvel and DC Comics -- attracted a more mature audience as it went along, with scenes of battles and sexuality that were intense for that time.

Hollywood has long tried to adapt the series, and several attempts at an animated series or feature have been made over the years.

Courtenay Valenti is overseeing for Warners.

CAA-repped Thurber, a commercials director, broke through into features with the 2004 Ben Stiller hit "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story." He also wrote and directed "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," an adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel.

The Pinis are repped by RWSH and Hansen Literary.

---

To see the actual article and all the follow up comments, go here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i2a7c68761043a405ce9484de5d5df531

And all the fun can be see on the Elfquest.com forums here:
http://www.elfquest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=389185#389185


Now to all you Elfquest fans out there, go spread the word!

Oh, and the computer is still dead... :P (Typing this at work.)
 

The day was going so well... then I got home. I pulled the laptop out of my backpack and yet again, the hard drive ate itself. Naturally it's like 2 weeks after the warranty expired.

You know, I'm really sick and tired of hard drives dying. Again, I have no idea what I've lost as far as files go. I may be able to see about getting a professional to try to do some recovery, but I won't be able to do that until the semester starts again in August. Until then, I'm back to the tower. All of my email from the last 7 months are prolly gone. I know the originals for the Voices For Tolerance site are gone. I'll have to reconstruct those. Fortunately I kept that simple.

I really hate having to reverse engineer projects because of hard drives that totally suck. Now I have to see what I have backed up and what's missing. My last backup was apparently the end of May, so it's not quite as bad as it could be, but still.

What's really sad is that the hard drive died just 7 months ago. Two dead drives in less than a year is bad.

I'm just really tired of this kind of stuff... I miss the days of Seagate Barracuda drives installed in computers. I really do. Those things NEVER died.


-------------------

Well, I finally got OS X installed on my FireWire drive and the laptop booted up just fine there. Translation: Hard drive is dead. Computer is fine.

It's really sad too. Computer can see the drive. It just can't read anything off it.

Exceptionally frustrating. Now I need to get a new hard drive... but again, not until next month. Horrible time for all this. Right before the Disneyland/Comic-Con trip.

Ick.


-------------------

Well, maybe not. Did a software update and then the FireWire drive stopped working... Prolly something in addition to the drive dying.



 

Hey all! For those that hadn't noticed, the new Voices For Tolerance album is out! janscottfrazier has a nice post about it here: http://janscottfrazier.livejournal.com/245653.html

And the new version of the website is now online!


voicesfor.org

Check out the new site and go buy the album!

Congrats to the Boston Celtics who totally MANHANDLED the Lakers to win their 17th national championship. Go GREEN! :)

Happy Metal Gear Solid Day everyone! :)
 

So, I had this bright red Squire Bullet guitar in storage for like 5 years. I finally got it out of storage and, since I have some time finally to do some things that I've either been too busy or too lazy to work on, I decided to start noodlin' with the guitar again. I took the holiday weekend to go up to the Guitar Center in Salt Lake and poke around. It's been forever since I've been to a music store, so it was nice to be able to hit one up again. While I was there, I picked up a Marshall Mini Amp and a Boss Chromatic Tuner pedal and starting playing around.

I need to practice my fingerwork on the basic chords. I'm horribly uncoordinated when it comes to my left hand, so making it do some work for a change is going to be fun.

After working on chords for the last hour, fingertips are nice and throbby. Just the way I'd hope they would be after doing all this for an hour. Once I get the chords down, I need to work on switching between them. That's where the uncoordinated fun will come in. It'll just take practice I suppose.

I am surprised though that the guitar, despite sitting in the heat of a storage unit in Corona for 5 years, it was still relatively in tune. I think only 2 of the strings were horribly off. Not bad me thinks. I'm glad that I swopped out the strings when I first bought it. That Chromatic Tuner pedal is just a wonderful thing too. I'm glad that I saw it in action with hsdshinji. A lot of the reviews I read were exceptionally favorable too. It's such a beautiful thing. Thanks Jon! :)

Now if it wasn't hella hot out here right now. I hate trying to go to bed in the heat...

Well, the packing is 99% done. Just need to put the computer away and I'm out the door and on the way to the airport. For all those in Chicago, I'll see you all in about 6 hours or so. ACen, good foodles and friends, here I come!

Ja! :)

For those that care, I'll be in Chicago ACen weekend. You can either rejoice or prepare for whatever you want to prepare for. I'll take whatever either way. With the semester being over and no school happening again until the Fall, I can take some time off and still get all my work hours in.

I'll have to do some serious eating while there too. Nothing "real" out here much. Miller's Pub will be a must. As well as some flavor of Chicago Style pizza. I'm sure there will be other things. I'll be out there Thursday (arriving in the evening) and returning on Monday (in the morning). It'll be nice to have a break. :)

Also, now that things are slowing down a bit, I'm looking to get @anime! going again. I'm not sure if anyone out there still watches anime and wants to write about it, but I'll be needing help as usual. Anyone want to get in on that? I'd be very grateful. :)

More when I have it. :P

 

It's been a while since I posted last, but I figured this is a good reason to post something...


The Piece of Paper, 1st of Two by *tekitsune on deviantART

16 years in the making. It took forever and several false starts, but it's finally done. I started my Associates Degree back in 1991. Several school name changes and several department overhauls later, it's finally done. I've been chasing after this for a long time. I'm glad that I was finally able to get it done. Now I've got nine or ten classes left (or 7 or 8, depending on how some things go...) and the Bachelors is done. Oh, how happy I'll be when that's finished. Life will be able to move on.

For now, I'm happy that the Piece of Paper #1 is done and in hand.

Just a quick message here as I sit for a bit before I head out again...

It's been a good day. Spent the day at BYU for the in-state rivalry game between BYU and the University of Utah.

1. Had a churro at the game. Don't usually see those outside of SoCal.
2. Had a real Chicago style hot dog with Vienna Beef hot dogs at the game. Electric green relish and everything. Don't usually see Vienna Beef outside of Chicago.
3. BYU 17, Utah 10. Utah got spanked with 1:38 left in the game. Utah had a chance to stop BYU on that last drive with BYU at a 4th and 18 but they left one of our guys wide open. Set up a nice BYU 8-point drive.
4. BYU won the Mountain West Conference football title. For the second year in a row.

Life is good today. Now I'm on my way to Red Robin to spend a chunk of a nice Gift Card I got at work for some of the recent pain and suffering that I've gone through there.

Way to go Cougars! :)

 

So, it's been forever since I've posted here in LJ. Life has been kinda funky since starting school again, so things have been kinda out of sorts...

So, since things haven't been rather noteworthy around here, here's an iKit Shuffle for the month of October.

• It's been a rough month for drawing external stuff. All the drawing I've had time and energy for has been for classes, with a few rare exceptions. Most times I don't even have time to do "homework" because of how much time work takes up. As a result, poor Alice and the Neverwonder crew have been neglected. I really need to find time to get that going again.
• Got tired of all the channels disappearing on Comcast's Basic Cable TV lineup, so we got the DirecTV turned back on. It's nice having all the old channels back. And the TiVo. :)
• After getting said DirecTV turned back on, come to find out that they're trying to charge me for 7 Adult channel pay-per-view things that they say were done in 2000. Quite a feat considering that, 1) I don't use the Pay-Per-View, 2) I wasn't living in Utah in 2000 when they claim that they were done and 3) that my service at the Utah address was turned off in October 1999 and wasn't turned back on until 2003. I first called them on October 1st and today, October 31st, it's still not resolved. And I've spent at least 3 total hours on the phone on 3 different occasions to try and get this straightened out. I was assured by the last person that I talked to, a supervisor, that someone would call me back and tell me what the story was by the 30th. And it's now the 31st and no call. I get to play hardball with them now.
• I hate charcoal. Drawing in charcoal is icky.
• I like conte crayon. Much better for doing my figure drawings.
• I also hate oil paints. While they have their appeal at times, things the last few weeks have just been frustrating... like curdling White... it's not liking the turpentine that I've been using I suppose... but it's the same as everyone else, so I'm not sure what's up there.
• Today is my Dad's birthday and it's Halloween. The family is doing the usual setup, with Pirates of the Caribbean as the theme. Little bro is dressed up as Jack Sparrow and went to his Dance class dress up this morning. I'd love to have seen the reaction...
• Since is it my Dad's birthday and there's little time for cooking because of the festivities of the day, that means it's Brick Oven pizza night. Best pizza outside Chicago.
• And finally, got a copy of Mac OS X Leopard installed on the laptop. All in all, good stuff. There have been a few little glitchy things with 3rd party stuff, like having to do some manual configuration on my PHP installation and things like Xjournal not working (switched to iJournal, which I'm using right now), but the OS is really slick. Very nice.

I think that's it for now. More babbling when I have it.

I may start using this here to cross-post art blog stuff... more when it comes.

NOTE: Just as a side note, people out there that don't want to see my blabbering anymore, please remove me from your friends lists. Thank you.

I've decided to clear this account out. Maybe sometime down the road, I'll come back and post something here again. For now, I just want to forget that this exists.

So, this last weekend I, rather unexpectedly, ended up going to the first anime con that I've ever been to where I wasn't working something at the con the entire time, Ohayocon 2007 in Columbus. I was part of the Voices For band crew and it was a kick ass weekend of fun, goofiness, music and insanity. Got to hang out with a lot of cool people. Granted, a lot of the guests that I was able to hang out with, I've met them all before and I know who they all are. They just have little to no clue who I am or that we had met before. But that's ok. TIme will take care of that...

I was happy to see everyone that I did. It was great to see yammerin_nutsak and the Noodle Man, bam2, fightdir, banzchan and Emily, goldenboyd, janscottfrazier, Monica, Brittney, Mike, Tiffany and Matt, Rikki and Tavi, Bruce... Then there's all of my ACen friends down there as well. angelmerc0, acenconchair, djopm, socialninja, Tim L., Brandi... It was a good old time. I was glad that I was able to hang out more with the likes of Doug, Jan, Bob and Emily over the weekend. Lots of fun was had. I'm glad that I was able to be there for a change. I remember why I enjoy the cons. It's to hang out with all the cool folks that I've been fortunate to meet over the last 12 years. I'll hopefully have a much bigger report written up soonly. :)

As for today, it's that time of year again. As I type this, the Macworld Keynote is going on and there's SURE to be some cool new stuff from Apple today. I'll have more on what I want to drool over later on in the day. Until then, I'm going to go back to the keynote coverage... Laters! ;)

 

In a bizarre twist, I'm on my way to Ohayocon to help with the Voices For band transportation. I'll see whoever will be there when I get there.

More later I'm sure.

 

Our party here just broke up. And I have to say that while a lot of messed up shit happened in 2006, there were a lot of really great things that happened in the Year That Was. My thanks go out to everyone, for all the happenings of 2006, good and bad. Being able to have a good mix of both the good and the bad, makes the good stuff look that much sweeter.

I've recently discovered the insane, twisted storytelling that is the band My Chemical Romance. While the overall message of their latest album is rather intense (it's dealing with cancer, death and just general angst), there's a lot of the appropriate in their stuff. Despite all the garbage that goes on in our lives, there's always something to look forward to, even in the worst of situations.

For me, despite craziness and insanity going on right now, things are in a much better place now that 2007 is here and I'm happy to be where I am with my friends around me. May the year bring great things for all of us.

We'll carry on. Happy 2007 everyone. :)

 

I'm not too sure I have the energy or desire to really go into the events of this last week here. Suffice it to say, a lot of friendships are going to end because of this last week.

And I don't have the energy to fight about all this shit anymore.

For those that care, I'm going to move my LJ from here over to my skyfall account. I don't want to see the side of this that is just going to cause me more pain, grief and stress. If you'd like to keep up on the world of me, please feel free to poke your head over to the skyfall account.

To the rest of everyone, it's been real. There's nothing more here to see. Move along.

 

You know, this has been a long week... I'm not too sure I have the energy to comment on it yet. Maybe later.

For now, we're stuck on a layover in Kansas City. Our plane has been delayed from Albuquerque. Apparently, there's weather there. Who knew? :P

We'll be getting into Chicago about 15 minutes late or so (at least that's what the dood at the podium says) so things are ok there.

I just can't want to be home at this point. -_-;;

Greetings from the layover in Phoenix. Only like 2-ish more hours to go until we're in San Diego. :)