I'm not quite over my cold or flu or brain infection or whatever yet, so I hope I'll be okay on Monday. I'm happy now, though, because ADV will be bringing the Azumanga Daioh manga to america in september! It's a bit more confusing than the anime, but I stil loves it, I do! Chiyo-chan, Precioussssss...

Got up the strength to go to Kroger and return some awful kroger-brand chicken deli meat I bought a month ago. Bought some ground beef and ground turkey (I mix them!) and hamburger buns. I wonder if I'll ever remember to clean my george foreman grill... Oh, that reminds me I need to turn the dishwasher on. *does so*

whoops! *remembers to click Post*

--regolith

--regolith

I am teh mastar of witty puns!

But seriously, check this out. It's a new build of Mozilla Firebird with a good bit of optimization, and it just plain screams compared to the normal build. Hell, on my work machine it's loading as fast as IE and rendering noticably faster.

With regards to the comic, the JPEG artifacts sure look worse this morning than they did while I was battling the sleep sharks last night. Or maybe it's just a result of the somewhat poor color calibration of my monitor at work, I'm not sure. In any event, compression artifacts can't hide the comedy!

In other news, bone bruises on your arm can be painful.

-apon

Going to Otakon by myself was pretty boring. I decided I was only going to go on Saturday, since the PA guys weren't going to be there to taunt with a witty t-shirt. Although, to be honest, I might have skipped Friday even if they did come, as the idea has really seemed much dumber recently than it did when I came up with it while goofing around and being silly a while ago.

Anyway, so Saturday. I was going to try to take MARC (the train) up to Baltimore, but their website says they're not open on weekends and I really don't know any better (I'm not really a public transportation kinda guy), so I drove. I proceeded to miss most of the MT panel / presentation thingy both because they started it an hour early and because finding parking near the BCC while Otakon is going on is very tough. I don't feel too bad about it though, since it didn't seem terribly interesting from what I caught of it. Not really sure what I was expecting anyway.

Other than that, I checked out the dealers' room, which seemed pretty pointless. I didn't run across anything interesting that wasn't available somewhere online for less, so I quickly lost interest. I have to wonder why they even bother having a dealers' room, but I guess maybe it's for those people who are afraid of the internet or something. I didn't bother to check out the 35mm theatre, since none of the films listed on the web site looked interesting. The video rooms probably held some promise, but the ones I stumbled across all seemed to be on the middle episodes of series for which I hadn't seen the earlier episodes, making them inaccessible. Not really a big loss, since I have plenty of stuff to watch at home. The whole artists alley / art show thingamabob (I don't really know what I was wondering through, like if they have an official art show during certain times or whatever) was pretty neat though. There was a lot of stuff that I didn't think was very good, but there were also some very cool pieces from some obviously talented people. If I'd been thinking I'd have tried to find out who these people were so I could track down their work in the future, or maybe even buy a piece, but I guess I wasn't really thinking. Anyway, at this point I didn't really feel like there was anything else to hold my attention, so I decided to go home. I realized after I got back that there was supposed to be a whole hall or wing or something devoted to gaming, but somehow that completely slipped my mind while I was there.

Overall, I don't think I'm going bother attending an anime convention again unless I have some friends to hang out with. I have a feeling that having other people I know around will probably improve the whole experience. As it was, the whole thing was kinda boring, and a high percentage of the activities going on (movies / video / shopping) I could have done at home. It probably didn't help that the crowds were rather enormous for my taste (I think it's over ten thousand people at Otakon), or that most cosplayers strike me as a bit odd.

Anyway, yeah, so there's my con report. I'm sure you're all fascinated.

-apon

*sigh* People like those who wrote the paper that George Will is referring to in this article are part of the reason that nobody considers psychology a legitimate science.

-apon

--regolith

--regolith

It's nice to see a large corporation mildly crippled by an exploit that has had a patch available for around two weeks. Amusingly, the network security people (or a subset thereof) advised those in charge that patches should be deployed, and yet still next to nothing happened.

I also don't understand why one would use comp time instead of sick time when sick, but I guess that's just me. I mean, I don't even understand how it's possible to return month old deli meat! (That stuff must have really reeked.)

-apon

Used comp time because we don't keep track of overtime/comp time very well, so I wanted to use it while our last couple weeks of late nights were still in my manager's mind. Maybe I will take next monday off... just because!

--regolith

Err, you must not be talking about the kind of deli meat where you go to the deli and get some meat, because that stuff doesn't keep for months. Are you sure that was deli meat and not like styrofoam packing peanuts or something?

Why would you use comp time instead of (free, unlimited) sick time? As for keeping track of overtime / comp time, you should right it down! I guess you aren't billing the customer hourly or anything, or you'd pretty much have to have an accounting system in place to keep track of it. (And don't tell me you get comp'ed for all of your overtime? If so, you're insanely lucky...)

-apon

Because I don't get unlimited paid sick time? Actually we do have a system to keep track of time, but I think I'm the only one who uses it... And I shall attempt to get comp'd for my overtime, yes! I don't normally have much overtime, though.

p.s. I think this page is getting a bit long... maybe the forums would be the place for these "discussions!"

--regolith

All the cool kids are over posting in the forum! Come see! That's about all the fake enthusiasm I can muster...

-apon

--regolith

AB ANNANDALE, THOMAS C.
324 TRS/FLT 669, DORM A4
PSC #2
2220 ANDREWS AVE., UNIT 362908
LACKLAND AFB, TX  78236-6029

--regolith

--regolith