Author: Andrew Huey

comic-con, day one

The first day of comic-con was pretty cool. I didn’t spend a lot of money, but I went to some interesting panels, and generally had a good time.

I went to the Torchwood panel. They showed a long clip from the first episode. I think I was the only person in the room who hadn’t seen the entire series already. It looks interesting, but I don’t get BBC America on my cable system, so I’ll have to wait for the DVDs, or maybe just watch it the way everyone else apparently has — good old BitTorrent. I loved the Q&A session. A lot of people who’d clearly seen season one wanted to ask questions about season two, but obviously didn’t want to admit that they’d watched season one via pirated DivX files or whatever. They all pulled out the “I’ve got a friend in England and he sent me the DVDs” line. (OK, maybe a couple of them really *did* have friends in the UK.)

I also saw The Pixar Story, Leslie Iwerks’ documentary about Pixar. Really good, fascinating, stuff. I’ll have to see it again when/if it gets a theatrical release. If not, I’m sure it’ll be on DVD at some point.

Later at night, I went to Ric Meyer’s Kung-Fu clip show thing, which I’ve done every year since he started doing it. I only stayed for the first half-hour. It started at 9pm, later than usual, and I was getting pretty tired by then. (I’m still mostly on east coast time.) He concentrated on TV shows rather than movies this time, and I have to admit I wasn’t that interested in the stuff he was showing. I guess that’s partially because I was sort of worn out by then, but also I’m just not that enthusiastic about the TV stuff.

Verizon

I got my Verizon bill today, the first bill since I got my new phone. Hoo boy. I’ve been on a $15, 25 minute per month, plan for the last few years, and that’s generally been enough time for me. Sometimes I go a bit over, but usually not by more than a few minutes.

I went a little nuts with the new phone though, and racked up $75 in additional charges. Since it looks like I’m already well over the 25 minutes for this month, too, I’ve decided to switch to the $40 plan, which gives me 450 minutes. That ought to cover any ridiculous amount of phone usage I can manage, and it’ll let me use Mobile Web with (relative) abandon.

The $15 plan, though, was some kind of special plan that I’ll probably never be able to get back into, though, so that’s a bit of a pain. And I’ve always been kind of proud to have a calling plan that was cheaper than anyone else’s. Well, I knew it wouldn’t last forever!

San Diego news

Four-day memberships to SDCC are now sold out, according to Newsarama, which I presume means that this con will be just as crowded as the last one, if not more so. I’m fine with that. I’ll just stick with stuff that’s a bit off the beaten path, and stay away from most of the Hollywood stuff.

NYC Kwik-E-Mart

I’ve been meaning to drop by the NYC Kwik-E-Mart, but the last couple of times I’ve been in NYC, I’d forgotten to look it up and make a note of its location. Well, now I know that it’s on 42nd between 8th & 9th, so I’m all ready to head over there and pick up some Buzz Cola.

more comic-con stuff

Mark Evanier has his list of panels that he’s involved with up on his site. Most of these are worth going to. I always enjoy the Sergio & Mark panel, the Cartoon Voices panel, and especially the Quick Draw panel, when I can manage to fit them into my schedule.

the couch is here

The new couch showed up today. It’s a little bigger than the old couch, which is fine, except that it’ll be interesting trying to get it out of the apartment when I either move or throw it out (whichever comes first). It looks fine, and it’s plenty comfortable, which I guess is all I can ask for in a couch. It’s outgassing like crazy right now, though. I opened the windows up, turned the fan on, and went out for an hour or so, and that seems to have helped a bit, but I can’t leave the windows open overnight, since it’s so hot and humid right now. I’ll leave the windows open all day tomorrow, while I’m at work. Hopefully, that’ll help. Meanwhile, this page has some interesting tips on how to deal with “new sofa stink”. I’m all out of incense, alas.