Uh anyways yeah So ConnectiCon was really awesome. Maybe the best year yet. I feel like we did more this year than we did in past years. I got to do a lot of Panels, See some screenings, Play a game or two, Meet new friends & network with people, Promote Millionaire Geeks, and still had time to go through the Artist Colony & Dealer Rooms.

Friday Jen and I left her apartment picked up our friend Heather and Drove to the Hartford convention center. We got there and there were ALOT of people there already. It’s amazing really how much the con has grown in just a few short years. Thankfully we had bought out tickets in advance so we got into the preregistered line which was much shorter. Heres a shot from in line showing all the people trying to sign in.

More of our Adventures Below the Cut!

So I won’t bore you with a Blow by blow but I did alot at the con. Friday Night I went to a Q&A Panel with Robert Picardo (the Doctor) and Ethan Phillips (Neelix) From Star Trek Voyager. It was really Great the two of them together are Hilarious and it was a really great insight into their experiences on the show. Saturday I went to their table and got autographed photos of them and one of Robert for my mom (the doctor is her favorite Star Trek Character). On Saturday Night Jen and I went to see them perform a Play they wrote called “House Call” in which they reprise their characters from voyager. It was incredibly funny and well worth going to the con just for that. If you ever get to go to a con where they’re performing it, GO SEE THE PLAY! After the Play I was able to get a Picture with each of them

You can see how excited I was It was really a great experience to meet them and get to see them perform together again.

I don’t have any pics of it to show you but on Saturday I went to a panel called “Intro To Shamanism” and another Panel called “Wyrd Science into the toy Chest”. Both panels were done by a very interesting man named Sean Kane. He’s a Self Described Shaman, a practitioner of Reiki, and Metaphysical Inventor. He’s a very interesting and Intelligent man. Depending on your Point of View and the Openness of your mind he’s either a crackpot Hippy or a Wise Mystic and Shaman. I won’t tell you which to believe but I found his views very interesting. It’s always interesting to hear from someone else how they view the metaphysical. Also His Panels became very good discussions (involving almost everyone in attendance) about the nature of reality and the synthetic separation between Science, Religion, & the Supernatural/Metaphysical. All In all two hours very well spent.

I also found time to attend several other panels, Play a few games during open play in the video game room, and sat in on a few screenings. The most interesting of which were the first half hour of the movie “Seven Samurai” (always a favorite of mine), and part of the Godzilla Marathon.

During my time not doing the above Dave and I went around the Artist Colony Shopping, Making friends, and networking. I bought a few cool things (which I may try to post pics of later) Including some cool prints. We also Talked to a few friends Including the Amazingly Talented Proprietor of So & Sew Plushies Who despite many personal disasters this past year and the loss of her partner in crime managed to Make it to the con and have Plushies to sell to us geeks.  She is truly amazingly talented and you should check out her page and consider commissioning a plushie.  Though she is a bit backed up right now so be willing to wait (trust me it’s well worth the wait).  While we were networking and chatting people up we were hading out Buttons and Flyers promoting Millionaire Geeks.  Heres a Pic of the Flyer if you’re interested.

Check out our site if you have a chance.  We Teach Geeks how to make money using what they know and doing what they love.  We also teach how to use the internet for other business opportunities and Internet marketing.

Now I’ll show you a few of my favorite Coplay Pics from the con.

Ah the Crew from Arkham Asylum escaped again I see

A Great Corpse Bride Costume.

She was Searching for her Edward… she never found him poor thing

Jen and Myself freaking out the natives waiting for the bus

You don’t often see a Persocom and a Jedi wandering around Hartford

Ok well I’m freakin tired and I need to get to bed at a reasonable time so I can get used to waking up early.  I start my new job Monday morning afterall.  So I’ll be done for now.  However I’ll post more cool Pics on the Millionaire Geeks Blog and maybe a few more on here as well sometime tomorrow.  So Lets wrap things up now.

This is a Picture of (from the left) Aly, Dave, Me, and Jen on the last day of the con.

And yes it was Incredibly windy that day if you’re wondering.

I have to say It was a Great con and possibly the best connecticon yet. We all had fun, and we got alot done. I hope you all Enjoyed the pics (and maybe the con too) and I’ll hopefully see you all at a future convention.

For more of Our ConnectiCon Adventures Check out our Millionaire Geeks Blog!

See you Space Cowboy

Well Have you ever been on one of those trips where you wonder “what freakin god did I piss off before I left the house.” thats kinda how our trip went.

We left on time to be at the theater with time to stair for getting our popcorn and those goodies. We had to drive quite a ways to get to there as the closest theater was about 40 miles away. A good hour assuming no major traffic issues. In any case we left and were on our merry way all was well with the world. We were making good time, there was no traffic. Hallelujah! For once we were going to have a trip go right! But wait, oh no somehow we missed our exit. Mind you I was paying close attention to the exit numbers so how this happened is beyond me, but somehow it happened. No worrys we thought we’ll get off the next exit and things will be fine. Of course around the bend in the highway traffic awaited us.

We did manage to fight our way past the hoards of cars and make it into White plains NY which is thankfully the right city and again things seemed to be going well. Before I go on let me say White Plains has a lot of great shops and a wonderful downtown area with some great little pubs and bars to visit. However it’s got one of the WORST designed street systems I’ve ever seen. I hate cities that intermix one way streets and normal streets. And I hate even more when they don’t put street signs in easily viewable places (or in some cases leave them out entirely). We found the theater, but it took us alittle while to find a place to park, and once we did it took a few goes around to get where we actually wanted to go with all the one way streets which of course as an out of towner are not easy to anticipate when there isn’t always a pattern. Apparently Main street (or at least large chunks of it) is a one way street in White Plains. I think you could see where that could be a problem in downtown.

Amazingly we did find parking (in a walmart parking garage of all places) and managed to make it to the mall with the theater on time. However the theater was not on the main floor and the directory in the main lobby did not say which floor it was on. I guess that one “small” little detail wasn’t important enough to include? I dunno maybe it was just temporarily missing and is usually present, but it was just a tad annoying. Thankfully some helpful folks in the elevator knew the right floor and we were once again on our way.

Now we had about 10 minutes till the movie, and again fate intervened *dramatic music* this time in the form of incompetent theater employees. This theater was one of those new fancy ones with the concession area that has actual fast food franchises built into it. That way they can sell burgers, hot dogs, and other unhealthy crap to you along with your Humongous tub of popcorn, and your gigantic tub of soda too large to all fit in your bladder. Now there was only one teeny tinny little problem. Apparently the people at the concession stand didn’t know how to work their register, make the food that it’s their job to make, or really understand any basic customer service skills. It took two of them to make the food and just barely made it right. Also how does a place that predominantly sells burgers and hot dogs not have any burgers? Apparently they didn’t have any. Nice one guys. Nice one. But amazingly we made it through the crushing incompetence of their employees and still arrived in the theater in time with snacks in hand.

The movie as I said before was great. I wont give any spoilers so don’t worry. What I will tell you is it had great plot, great writing, great everything really. They of course used the same voice actors as the series does in America which is always a plus (and I happen to think they did a decent job casting the voices). Also unlike some anime series who change their animation style drastically from the original series when they make a theatrical movie Bleach did not do this. They also did not contradict or alter any major plot points of the series. For those reasons I give them a gold star. What made it even better than great was the behind the scenes special they showed before the movie showing how Viz Media makes the American manga and anime version of Bleach including special interviews with all the voice actors. The only criticism I have is that Orihime, Uryu, and Chad have little to do and are barely on screen without much of a legitimate reason why. But thats forgivable with everything else being so awesome. So again the Movie was amazing and well worth the 40 mile drive and $22 for tickets. Of course after the movie thats when things took a turn for the worse.

After the Movie we decided to look at the cool fountain that was outside the mall and talked for alittle while. It was cooler out now that it was dark and was a good place just to hang out and enjoy the night. After we chatted about the movie, politics, some Millionaire Geeks stuff and whatever else we chatted about we headed back to the garage. Now we figured it would be about another 45 minutes to an hour to get home (at this point it was about 10pm). So we got the car, paid our parking fee ($4 not too bad) and were on the road again…. sort of. Unfortunately because of the one way streets it was a pain to get back to the highway but after driving around in circles for a while we managed to find the highway entrance. Unfortunately it was under construction and we couldn’t get on the highway going in the direction we needed to go. We figured we would get on the highway going the wrong way, get off the next exit and get back on in the right direction right….. WRONG! Apparently the next exit did not have an entrance ramp back onto the highway so we were now stuck wandering the city for a while trying to figure out where the hell we were and how to get back to the highway and get home. Also we were running low on gas at this point.

We did eventually find out way back to the highway which was nice. And we managed not to die when we almost hit some concrete barriers (which wasn’t our fault btw). For you see it’s always nice when you come face to face with your own death at the hands of incompetent construction people who failed to realize that not all cars are equipped with magical x-ray windshields. So the drivers cant see through bridges and around curves and magically know the lane that was there a moment ago is no longer there. Apparently they had closed off a lane (literally right around a blind curve) with concrete barriers. However they didn’t put up signs or have anyway what so ever to warn us of this. Now I realize they may have literally just done this as they were actually working as we passed by (thankfully not dead). The problem is that any number of horrific accidents could have occurred in the time that there was no warning.

So back on the highway we somehow got lost and turned around on the connectors and ended up going the wrong way again. So we decided to get off the highway find a gas station so we didn’t run out of gas and die cold and alone in the wilderness of Yonkers New York. While Drake filled the tank I busted out the GPS unit to figure out where we were and more importantly How the hell to get home from here. After all that excitement we thought we were golden. It wouldn’t be long now till we got home. But it wasn’t meant to be. For the GPS apparently has something terribly terribly wrong with it. Because while the address it said we were heading to was home in Connecticut. It was sending us deeper into New York State. I know nice right? AND it gets better. The GPS kept dropping out signal and recalculating the rout we were on ever few minutes which changed it’s mind on what road we should take.

So we busted out the backup GPS (Dave’s old unit which thankfully was still in the car) and after driving around for 10 minutes to find a reliable signal we got back on the road home. This time it was actually correct and got us home. By this time we were hungry so we decided to stop at the Diner and get some food in us. By the time we got to the Diner it was about 2 am. Which was quite exciting let me tell you. After we had something to eat, did alittle brainstorming for this brilliant site you’re currently reading part of and paid the bill it was later than that. So we didn’t get to actual home and the hope of sleep till like 3am.

And that my Friends is the story of our great and epic adventure. All that just so we could see Bleach in the damn movies.

I know it may seem strange to some, but even though I had never met him personally I can say that Gary Gygax had an immeasurable impact on my life. The game he helped to create sparked my immagination and inspired me in ways TV, and video games never could. Playing Dungeons and Dragons helped me to explore parts of myself otherwise untaped, and has given me some of the greatest memories of my friends that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

I could say much more about this wonderful man who has given so much to all of us, but others have already said it better. So all I’ll say is thank you Gary, your legend will live on in all of the gamers hearts you’ve touched. I just hope wherever he is now that Gary is still playing games. Perhaps he’s leading a group of angels through their first adventure right now. Maybe one day when I fail my saving throw for the last time, I’ll finally meet Gary Gygax and get to thank him for all he’s given me before sitting down for a nice game of Dungeons and Dragons. What a wonderful afterlife that would be.