Beyond My Geeky Life

I do love thrift stores. If you hit them just right you can find some great deals. And it is really just luck that you are there at the right time to find the better deals. In High School I found a complete Optimus Prime in the box for four dollars. The box was beat up and the Styrofoam was in backwards so all you could make out was his trailer. I took the chance and everything was there except roller, which was not hard to get a hold of. The stickers had not even been put on yet. He is still in my collection, although right now he is not on display. Even now days I from time to time find actual vintage Star Wars items. Last year one store had a early figures case from the late 70s for only a coupe bucks. While it is not a highly sought after piece, it was still cool and the price was good. I rarely pick up something that I plan to sell though. Most of the time I buy stuff to add to my collection. When I do pick up something that I plan to resale, it is never wroth that much. I l...

My youngest son just had his 11th birthday. I don't think he got a single gift that I would not mind having. He got a Doctor Who TARDIS blanket, which he is now wrapped up in on the couch, from his grandparent (It goes perfectly with the TARDIS pillowcase they got him for Christmas). We got him a really impressive looking book that goes behind the scenes of the making of the Hobbit movies. It has lots of great picture of the props and costume designs, as well as story broad and sets and so on. And a small light up TARDIS. His friends got him mostly Magic cards.  After twenty years Magic the gathering is still going strong. I love that my boys and their friends play it. I showed off a bit to his friends by showing them my old school magic cards. He also got a Nerf gun, which we have all played with. And he got money, lots of money.  With his moeny his picked up a new 11th Doctor's sonic screwdriver, a Character Building set of the TARDIS and the LEGO Back to the Futur...

As if I needed more to look forwards to at DCC this year, they just announced that they will have actual participants from Face Off (For those of you who do not keep up with this blog, that is the greatest reality program on the air right now) doing panels and demonstrations. Since my oldest son is interesting in costuming as a career, this will be perfect for him. I am looking forwards to seeing what other surprises DCC has in store for us. They have been good at building up the excitement for the convention this year.

The Science channel is once more doing a Firefly marathon today. They seem to do one about once a month or so. It is always nice to have something like that playing in the background at times. No matter how many times I see any episdoe of Firefly, it never gets old. Most programs have some episodes that are not too good and are not worth watching again, or even once in some cases. Most of the time you get one or two such episodes a season. Somehow every episode of Firefly is so well done that they are easy to watch over and over again and enjoy them fully. With thirteen episodes and one movie, the Firefly saga is undeniably one of the greatest Sci-fi shows ever. I personally rank it as one of the top five. Watching the episodes it is obvious as to why they have such a following after all this time. There are just too many moments of brilliance found in ever episode. You start with the opening song that is filled with emotion and perfectly fits the show's theme. I rank as the ...

 In what is a not at all surprising turn of events with the way the publishing market has been going for some time now, Marvel Comics is going to do some major changes and focus highly on their digital publishing http://goodereader.com/blog/digital-comic-news/marvel-phasing-out-retail-comic-distribution-to-focus-on-digital We know that e-books are taking off big time, making big bucks for publishing companies with little in the way of actual costs compared to traditional publishing. For good or ill this is the way that we are headed. E-books and digital comics are normally cheaper than their print counter parts (Not always, as I have seen some big name e-books cost as much as print), they take up a lot less room and are easier to carrying around. So there are is a lot on the plus side for going digital. I myself love the feel of a physical book. There is just something about actually turning the page. That is something you do not get from a digital book. I am also curious ...

I recently finished up the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I am still not fully sure what I actually read though. That is just the kind of read Snow Crash is. Now to try and explain Snow Crash and see if I can make any sense of it. Snow Crash takes place in California in the near future (Well, actually an alternate present that feels near future). According to Amazon.com it is a cyberpunk novel, which makes sense. Yet somehow while reading it there was nothing about it that registered as being Cyberpunk in my mind. In this world there is a government, as the Feds are still there, yet they somehow are not really running things. The rule of law seems to be that franchises are the real power. In this world your pizza delivery (and other) franchises are openly controlled by the Mafia. You are a citizen of whatever franchise you pledge your loyalty to.  The police are a pay for service organization and the prisons are all businesses, some being run out of the basement of...

In the last Amateur Skeptics podcast we recorded ( http://amateurskeptics.com/ )we ended the podcast by talking about G.I.Joe's 50th anniversary. Don't ask what that has to do with being skeptical. it is our podcast and we will go off topic as we please We had a good talk about the toy line's history and I got to show off my knowledge concerning the topic. And I was not even the one to put the story up for discussion. Our art guy (Yes, we have an art guy. That's how fancy a podcast we are) put together G.I.Joe style filecards from the 80's line for everyone involved in the podcast. I really liked mine, so here it is for all to see. Thanks Mac. The podcast, Episode 104: American Heroes, should be up some time this week.