Your Day

It will be more than enough
No worries
I hope...

Nice... very nice! Those EVGA Hybrids really are sexy. My computer is feeling totally inapropriate now XD (clicky-click for PCPartPicker link)

On topic now... My father and I just finished assembling the pool. Just in time too, as we're about to have a full week of ~35°C highs (95°F for all you imperial unit barbarians).

Had an interesting episode with my cats today.

I declined to sit at the chair in front of my home computer and just leaned forward to get my head level with the monitor. That was the cue for one of my cats to jump on my back and lie down. So I spent short moment walking around leaning forward like I had some severe back pain in order to prevent myself from disturbing the cat. I eventually got her off my back after about 5 or so minutes of this.

The cat in question, she's named Princess, is the most openly affectionate of my cats. I've had countless occasions where I'm playing some online game (which, y'know, can't be paused) at which point she jumps up in my lap and wants to cuddle. Probably pawing at my face to try and get my attention.

I spent a good chunk of my day scavenging multiple pawn shops and charity-owned thrift stores for cheap cosplay clothes. I didn't find anything I had in mind, but I felt the whole experience was worth it since I used the opportunity to donate some of my old clothes.

EDIT: Update for Jan 26th.

I did a lot of things to get ready for my trip to PAX: shaved my beard, got a haircut, took care of some financial stuff, refilled my meds, got some snacks, made plans for places to visit, and did some packing. I am ready for fun.

Spice and Wolf and Log Horizon? Sounds like you're an economics fan

 Well, now that I've recovered from the weekend, I thought I'd share some details from my time at PAX South. Overall, it was smaller than PAX Prime and East, there was more of a focus on tabletop, indie games, and Twitch streamers, and there weren't as many big companies having a presence there. I still had fun and felt I got more than my money's worth, but I'd like to see more "big" stuff next year.

THURSDAY
-Drove down to San Antonio
-Picked up badges from will call at the convention center since I ordered them too late to get them in the mail
-I visited the Alamo, Tower of the Americas, mall, river walk, and met a bunch of other attendees.
-Had dinner at a ramen restaurant a member recommended and thought I'd order something that wasn't available at the ramen place in my town. It tasted great, but about halfway through the meal all of my arms and legs fell asleep, there was pain in my chest, and a dubstep remix of Storm Eagle's music from Mega Man X started playing on the speakers. I was in Hell. I thought it was some sort of reaction with my meds (I have to take them with food), but the next day I found out it was actually an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients. I felt like like James Bond in "Casino Royale" when he found out he had been poisoned and tried to get to the defibrillator in his Aston Martin. The employees tried to take care of me when they noticed I wasn't feeling well, so I made sure to leave a good tip.
-After resting in my car for a bit, I decided to check out a local anime store. It had an infamous reputation and I was originally going to skip it, but figured "things can't get worse than what just happened. Maybe they'll have some cheap cheesy 90's anime for sale." I went inside and left within less than 5 minutes. I wasn't greeted by any employees, people were being weird, there were unfunny memes about the store rules posted inside, and it smelled funny. It felt like being in Anime Hell and Satan was a high school anime club president.
-Visited RikRic OtakuCafe. This place was great. It was the total opposite of the other store I visited earlier. People were friendly, well-behaved, everything looked clean and smelled nice, and there was a huge crowd there to hang out and play fighting games. Some folks there also let me have some pizza they ordered for free, which was great since it helped settle my stomach from earlier. There wasn't any anime for sale, but there were tons of figures and other types of merch.
-Checked into my hotel. It was 15 minutes away from the con, but I wasn't too bothered by the distance since it was cheap. Then I got into my hotel room and there was a stench, the lock on my hotel door was partially broken, the bathroom door had trouble opening, I kept hearing sirens, and I could hear drunk people knocking on my door as I tried to sleep. I felt like Vaughn at the beginning of "Tales from the Borderlands" when he and Rhys are driving through Prosperity Junction.

FRIDAY
-Arrived at 7:30am to get in line for the convention. Met cool people.
-Entered the convention center at 8am, managed to get in very front of the "Storytime with Cliff Bleszinski" panel line, met more cool people, and ended up right behind the VIP row.
-I thought the panel was great. Cliff talked about his journey in the game industry, retirement, coming out of retirement, and changes he wanted to see. There were also lots of "Rick and Morty" quotes and references.
-Ended up getting lost in the expo hall for the rest of the day. I accidentally missed one panel I wanted to see, but I wasn't too bothered by it since I was having fun exploring booths, playing demos for indie games, and getting free stuff.
-Got to hang out in the Cliffy B PAX entourage with some friends of his and other fans. It was pretty cool.
-Changed into a toga and went to the Devolver Digital booth as part of a promo they had where they'd give away their entire Steam library to anyone who played a demo for a new game they had while wearing a toga. They said they'd e-mail a code after PAX finished and it should arrive before the end of the week.
-Got in line to play Dreadnought, but mostly because I wanted a free t-shirt since they were giving them to the winning team on multiplayer matches. There were also three different matches going on at the same time, so the line wasn't too long. As soon as I sat down to my assigned seat, someone at the booth said "Surprise! The two teams we just seated are going to have their matched streamed on Twitch and displayed on the big monitor above the booth!". I struggled with learning the controls. I could barely find any opponents or teammates. I died a lot. I didn't know there were some features I could've used the entire time until 30 seconds before the match ended. It was kinda embarrassing knowing that the match I was in was being streamed. My team lost, but because the match was so close the folks running the booth gave everyone shirts anyway. I thought that was nice because while I felt Dreadnought seemed like a good game, I didn't really have fun with it and I didn't think it'd be worth waiting in line a second time for a 50% chance at getting a shirt.
-Went to a Thai restaurant some people I met recommended, ended up getting a table with another group of people attending PAX, and got along well with them. The food was good too.
-I felt too tired to see the evening PAX concert, so I went to an ELO fan meetup instead. It was a lot of fun. Every ELO fan under the age of 60 in the world was there. All 20 of us. A couple people who stopped by thought it was ironic and were confused at everyone else being genuine. Adam Sessler showed up and trolled us by saying Emerson, Lake, and Palmer was better. I told him I thought they were cool too. He ended up giving me a fist bump before walking off.

SATURDAY
-This day was more focused on panels. Saw three of them: one fun panel, one industry/professional panel, and one people where it was just people discussing something they liked. I thought they were all entertaining.
- I had three different experiences in line for each panel. The first one was a long, deep conversation with a new friend I made. The second involved hanging out with a group that started talking about Dreadnought and I told them my experience with it, then the conversation shifted to all sorts of topics. We ended up talking about educational games, outgrowing Final Fantasy, crowdfunding, and I helped one person remember a the name of a game that was described as "a gothic RPG designed by a Japanese cowboy". The third one involved two awkward teenagers on both sides of me playing overpriced plastic ocarinas trying to start a band together.
-There was a Borderlands meetup scheduled to begin as I was in a panel and it was expected to last three hours, but it pretty much ended by the time I got to where the meetup was supposed to be. Got to meet lots of cosplayers and take pictures, though.
-Decided not to go to an awards show that was in the same room as the last panel I went to because the line was almost full and I somehow felt tired and drained after a day of seeing panels. Got dinner and went to the hotel to sleep instead.

SUNDAY
-This day ended up feeling like a ghost town compared to Friday and Saturday. Waiting in the queue room that day was the only time I experienced no one else wanting to talk during the con, so I just listened to some podcasts.
-There weren't really any panels I wanted to see or anything I wanted to do, so I hung out in the PC and console gaming rooms for a bit and toured the expo hall one last time to get some merch.
-By noon, I felt like it was time to go home as things were winding down. I felt a little bit disappointed since Sunday was the only day I visited last year, there was still tons of neat panels going on, and it was much more crowded then. Still, I had a great time on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Today is my 3rd year wedding anniversary and PokéWaifu got me a glass from my favorite podcast. I love her so much! What a great gift. Cheers!

I'll be going to see Deadpool tomorrow.

I'm more of a fan of Joe Kelly's Deadpool... but everyone so far says the movie's pretty awesome in brilliant ways, so I'm gonna give it a shot soon