The Book of Boter
i'd like to think i talk to the internet, but really i talk to my future self
The Book of Boteri'd like to think i talk to the internet, but really i talk to my future self |
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| About the Book | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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    Links: Press Enter Productions Key Pixel Gathering of Filmers |
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| Nov. 20th, 2009 @ 11:07 am 2009 Christmas List | |||
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| Placeholder list, stuff from last year and notes for things to add this year, will be cleaned up over the weekend. ( Music. ) ( Audiobooks. ) ( Movies. ) ( Television series. ) ( Video games. ) And as a non-multimedia item (sort of), a Spiderbrace 2 would be nice. We're currently using Vapes' for Abstract Messiah, but it's something I'd like to have for my own use. |
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| Nov. 20th, 2009 @ 01:41 am (no subject) | |||
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Current Mood:
I just want to take a moment out here and say that I love Steph. lovedWe were talking about holiday plans... currently, she plans on spending both Thanksgiving and Christmas with her family. I talked with her about it, mentioning that I was hoping to do some sort of split, Thanksgiving with one family and Christmas with the other. I danced around the idea that I was hurt by her plans on doing both with her family, when she also did so last year*. So I told her I was going to bed, and I started turning off the lights, in a funk. But, that's not how I want to go to bed. So I signed back on and said, "No, I'm not going to bed," and proceeded to tell her my feelings on it. And she listened. I said to her that she didn't have to make a decision now on any holiday, but at least to think about it knowing how I feel. Some couples might have blown this out of proportion; made an argument out of it, fought, whatever. On the contrary, just that shorty conversation made me fall for Steph even more. That she was willing to listen and is willing to reconsider her plans - even if she doesn't end up changing them - speaks volumes to her inner character. That's the woman I fell it love with, and I'm very happy for it. *I'm gonna pre-empt the comments - she's making her own decision as to her holiday plans. Please don't discuss, "We'll, we're doing this," "Well, I'd do that." Not the point of this post. |
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| Nov. 19th, 2009 @ 01:13 pm (no subject) | |||
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| God dammit, Amazon. What the hell. |
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| Nov. 19th, 2009 @ 02:54 am (no subject) | |||
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| Here's a short video showing us cleaning out the cell block set. Vapes and I had left at this point, it was just Christina, Craig and Aaron at this point. |
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| Nov. 18th, 2009 @ 07:19 pm (no subject) | |||
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Current Location: Game Nutz
Update from another customer tonight: Penn Traffic is filing for bankruptcy again. Again. Third time in a decade. And this time, they're just saying, "Aw, fuck it," and selling/closing the stores.Good on Denise for getting out in time, then. Still, even if Price Chopper (or Hanaford's, as the customer said would be nice [he works at Price Chopper]) goes in there, she'd have a hard time being re-hired because of the method of her getting kicked out. The place potentially going out of business takes some of the wind out of my Wild Card removal/"Burn it, collect the ashes, drop them on the service desk, and tell them, 'That's my customer loyalty. You can keep it." But, that's the price that's paid. If the customer had told me that before I heard the news about Denise, I would have been troubled. Now, I'm rather happy. (Among other things, if someone else goes is, it will indeed be easier to avoid the place.) |
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| Nov. 18th, 2009 @ 03:00 pm (no subject) | |||
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| I smell intense bullshit nextdoor. Denise was fire from P&C last week. She'd been working there for longer than I've been alive, I think. Reason? Selling cigarettes to a minor. Okay, understandable... I don't understand that the next day, two new people were in the office. She got set up and kicked to the fucking curb. She was the heart of that front end, one of the few remaining smiling faces. The kid I was talking to (he was hired shortly before I left, so I can't remember his name) said that while the place had always been going to shit, it took a steep turn for the worse as soon as I left. Apparently my six year tenure was a good luck charm, and now they're turning no profit and will probably close within a few years. Which, I don't care - after doing that to Denise, I don't plan on shopping there anymore. *symbolically takes P&C Wild Card out of wallet* We're hoping that Price Chopper buys the building and takes it over... pipe dreaming that they re-hire Denise. But it won't happen, not that last part anyways. Where's she going to find a job? The only job she's done is grocery, and no store will hire someone who sold cigarettes to a minor. |
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| Nov. 17th, 2009 @ 02:58 pm (no subject) | |||
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| Updates made to the last entry. Keeping it all in one place for posterity: A bit about a Wednesday set. Dinner Friday. My eating habit on Saturday. Attempt on Saturday to get a song out of my head. |
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| Nov. 17th, 2009 @ 03:44 am UCF: Abstract Messiah: November Filming Report | |||
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| This is going to be a long one, guys. Check behind the cut to see how our five-day filming week went. WARNING: Massive spoiler alert here. I talk about sets (and thus locations) as well as how the actors did and my interactions with them (and thus plot details). I AM NOT KIDDING. TURN BACK NOW. ( 90 hours of fun. ) The shoot was amazing fun. It's the most professional anything has ever felt, even when we got rid of the slate. The slate seemed... almost too pretentious. With the writers, directors, and editors being almost one and the same, there was really no need. We upped the quality of sound with audio equipment, we got better stuff for the handheld camera, we just generally upped everything. And it worked. I worked with people that I'd only met during auditions, and it all came out together. The crew worked great, the cast was awesome... perfection. I said before the shoot that, with everything that had gone on, the shoot had better go as smooth as butter. And you know what? It did. |
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| Nov. 8th, 2009 @ 02:20 am (no subject) | |||
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| Okay, Rob and I, and probably Justin, are going to complain about this on a podcast supplemental tomorrow, but I'm posting it here. Northeast U.S. GameStops Selling Modern Warfare 2 Early (Link includes my comment thread.) I commented on there quite angrily, as I imagine that we will in a supplemental podcast recording tomorrow. (Full text of my comment is below, in case it's censored by "disemvowelment".) I'm getting some encouraging responses on there regarding, "Hey, you might wanna look into antitrust laws," and so forth. Supposedly, Activision let GS do it because some independent stores are breaking street date, but what about the rest of the mom and pops playing by the rules? We have, I think, 16 preorders for the game. I bet at least five will just get it from GameStop instead. Anywho. I'll be watching the comment thread, looking into things, and having some fun ranting on the podcast supplement tomorrow. WHAT. THE. FUCK. I WORK at a mom and pop place where the supplier made us sign something saying we wouldn't sell it early. And then GameStop gets special fucking permission for this shit? Activision (one of our favorite corporate whores) gives GameStop (another favorite whore) permission because mom and pop places were selling the game early, so that GameStop isn't outdone by the competition. So NOW, it's GAMESTOP that's outdoing the competition. GameStop can take a few dozen lost fucking sales; I guarantee you that of the twenty five preorders my store has, at least five will have already gotten it at GameStop. GameStop can swallow that shit; we can't. Fuck Activision. Fuck GameStop. Disemvowel me or whatever, but this directly affect *my store* and *my livelihood*. We're counting on our copies selling to people who are waiting for them. Edit: Activision is denying giving any sort of special permission to GameStop. I hope that GS is hit with a really big fine for this, that would make my day. Edit 2: Yeah, corporate decision on GameStop's part. |
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| Nov. 7th, 2009 @ 01:20 am What is up with November? | |||
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| Last night, I was working with Ron on the new store, giving him my ideas and taking his. We got some plans laid down, then went to the Chinese buffet for dinner. As we were finishing up, Ron got a phone call. He had to go to the hospital; his stepdad Art (sometimes referred to as "Pop") wasn't doing too well. Pop had been in the hospital/extended care for close to a month, I believe. I had this horrible, sinking feeling... like I knew that something terrible was going to happen. I told Ron to go straight there and not worry about dropping me of at my car at the Sherrill store. I called Dad, and he came to pick me up. Later in the night, I texted Ron, to see how he was doing. "Pop passed away at 9:20," he replied. "We will miss him very much." Today at the store, in addition to the radio being off (the only station that comes in plays Christmas music), I muted the demo TVs for the day in a "moment of silence" sort of gesture. The store felt sorta hollow, empty. It was indeed pretty slow (though the few sales we had were big ones, any other Friday we'd be rather ecstatic). I brought in my Master Chief helmet as a little donation/sympathy jar for them... neat idea, but I'll remember to bring the clear basket I was originally planning on, because as impressive as it is, once it's turned upside-down it looks like just so much detritus from the store on the countertop. Mom suggested a sympathy card, so I brought one in and called Rob; he came in after work to sign it. So. I dealt with getting Modern Warfare 2 preorders into the store on time, signing paperwork saying we wouldn't sell it ahead of time (like two callers told me GameStop was doing, hah), etc. About 7:30, as I'm getting ready to close up shop, Laz calls me. His Grannie passed away tonight :( Art, I was expecting, as morbid as it sounds. Everyone knew that he only had so much time left. And when Ron got the call, though I tried to put forth a cheery attitude for Ron's sake, I somehow knew. Grannie? Blindsided. I don't know how bad she was... I knew her health was failing, but I had thought that she'd be around to see Abstract Messiah, at least a rough cut of it. I don't know that she ever really "got" the series, but she was such a wonderful person who loved seeing people happy and pursuing their dreams, and I thought she'd be able to see Laz's sense of accomplishment when we come out of the other side of this next year. Art's wake and funeral are on Sunday. Grannie's, I believe, on Monday. I'm going to try to get to Art's on Sunday, even if it means closing the store a couple hours early. This hasn't been a good year for this sort of thing. |
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| Nov. 6th, 2009 @ 12:21 am (no subject) | |||
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| A little disappointed in Sore Thumbs. They did something where shit hit the fan, and did a deus ex machina "I will fix this," which ended up in a reboot, but one of those "this is a parallel universe where things are wrong and people don't know it but sometimes they get inklings" kinda ways. And this "reboot", which I'm hoping is temporary, goes on for a bit too long. The ad that I followed for the comic actually sent me to the beginning of the reboot ("DO OVER?" as text on the banner should have been a hint), but I like it a lot better pre-"reboot". Heck, I even preferred the black-and-white art style over the color. We'll see how it goes. With a thrice-a-week comic, doing something this continuity-rending is a bit disastrous. A daily comic can do something like that, up to a point, but this... Well. Still want the Coleman plush, though. |
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| Nov. 5th, 2009 @ 01:20 am SQRREEEEE | |||
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| I very often end up making squee sounds when Coleman does anything in Sore Thumbs (the webcomic I posted a couple entries back). Coleman is available as a plush toy.  EEEE "Plush" will be a new category on my wishlist. It will also include the Zero Punctuation imp. |
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| Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 03:30 pm Cheap Saturn Astra | |||
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| Man... what I wouldn't give for a lotto win right now :P As a nail in the coffin on last year's Saturn Astra ramblings, with the company going out of business all new Saturn vehicles are $4,000 off, meaning that the three-door XR equipped with a nice premium trim package is $17,265 - less than $1,000 the base price of the cheapest Astra. Ah, the Jazzmobile that could have been. That reminds me, I've gotta find some random things to tech-up the interior of Laz's Jeep for just that purpose... [source] |
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| Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 10:21 am (no subject) | |||
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I keep going back and forth as to whether I want to read Sore Thumbs. (It appears to be, at least at the point that I'm reading it, about a bunch of misfits running a video game store of the same name.) I was directed to it from another webcomics' site to a strip somewhere in the middle (oddly enough), which I enjoyed, but then went back to the beginning. I'm going through the archives now... and finally made up my mind to finish it. The Fairbanks character is annoying to me as a reader, not just, "Boy, he's annoying," but, "Boy, it's hard to read this with how annoying he is." But a midget bear wasting everybody in a video game might just be the cutest thing ever. |
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| Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 01:40 am Busy November | |||
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| First off, my bowling tonight: 123, got hot with a 164, then blew my chance at my high series with a 110 for the last game, totaling 397 - 5 pins short. Then, how Halloween went last week. Steph came to visit - always nice, I saw her four times in October, a pace which I don't think I can afford financially but love anyways. Friday, the party went quite smoothly for the most part. Was nice and subdued. I'm not at all about the loud, raucous parties, so this one was nice. A few people had too much to drink, but the next morning everyone knew who they were and I don't think there were terrible hangovers, so times were good. Halloween itself was even mellower; I worked the second half of the day, and with Internet out and most people gone trick or treating (three customers in four hours), I had to occupy myself, so spent a couple hours playing The Force Unleashed while in my Dark Jedi costume. Okay, now about my busy November. First off, filming for Abstract Messiah starts in under a week. It's coming up crazy fast, like Christmas, catches you off guard. And something that's coming right in against it is me getting another key on my keyring (to put it in the most obtuse manner). Prior to today, from most personal to least, my keys were my car key, the apartment key (share with Jen), two for the apartment building (two other apartments), one for my parents' place (where I don't currently live) and one for the store (public place). Now, it's car key, apartment key, apartment building keys, store that I will be a manager of, store that I won't be working at but will still have access to (I think). Yes, that's right. Saturday, Ron paid the rent and deposit on a new Game Nutz location in Canastota (really, just past Wampsville). I went in there today and drew up a quick brainstorm floor plan that I'll show to Ron tomorrow, see what he thinks. A lot's going on there. I'd love to personally be a part of its entire assembly, but with being gone for a week with Abstract Messiah shooting... well, the timing's a bitch. Hopefully we can get it up and running by Black Friday, though. So, November is nice and busy, but in a good way. I would say, "I can't wait," but it's already here. Crazy. |
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| Oct. 30th, 2009 @ 12:34 pm (no subject) | |||
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New version of the Firestorm cover. Mainly updated the stuff on the back, but also added the Key Pixel logo to the spine. Took a while to figure out how I wanted to do it, but the monochrome white-on-black (white-on-transparent for the back) works best. I took inspiration for the spine from the Tom Clancy games. They look so awesome just sitting on a shelf next to each other. ( Pics of the games. ) |
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| Oct. 29th, 2009 @ 02:21 am "Time for someone to get a watch." *punch* "Just did, thanks." | |||
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| So, yesterday, Mom sent me to Wal-Mart telling me, "Buy socks and underwear with my credit card," explaining that she had already gotten Jen some, plus some bras. After a, "Please don't get any bras," joke, off I went. I realized that I needed a watch. Well, I realized this last week; the nice one I got for Jazz in Abstract Messiah has an explosed plastic face and thus already got scuffed. I returned it to the store for another one (the store happened to be Target - thanks, Steph, for the help there, because the guy at the desk would have had no idea what he was doing), but I'm not wearing it until filming in case it gets banged up again. So, Wal-Mart. Get what I needed, then looked at watches. Got a pretty decent one, Mom was like, "Okay, that's a good substitution for bras," and I set along programming it (24 hour time, five minutes fast - screws with people who look at my wrist instead of asking me the time). I go to bowling, and check the time there at one point. It is while trying to look around an obstruction to see the digital time that I finally realize that the watch I got is also an analog watch, and one of the hands was in the way. This rather amused me, and I immediately set that five minutes ahead as well. I am not used to a watch that, in the silence that is left with only my thoughts, ticks. This has completed Boter's Nothing Post. Please carry on with your day. |
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| Oct. 25th, 2009 @ 12:47 pm Looking-Glass Updates | |||
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| So, Looking-Glass wasn't accepted to MachinExpo 2009. Disappointing, but not surprising. It was really my first machinima, and while I felt it's a solid first outing into the medium, there are people who have been doing it for years that submitted entries. Holy crap, I haven't used this avatar in forever, it still has Steph Nickel's logo on it :/ Gotta make a new one and re-upload, with the new PE logo. As long as we're on that topic, though, I'll say a tiny bit about Key Pixel - the "Gathering of Filmers" tag is something that I designed to be liquid. Which is to say, expandable into other media. Unless the other object, I'll be putting "Key Pixel Gathering of Writers" onto Firestorm (and subsequent Burnt Skies books, the next one of which will probably be a short story anthology - if you're interested in writing one, let me know). |
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| Oct. 25th, 2009 @ 12:00 pm Game Nutz Back Room Totes | |||
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Some pictures for everybody, showcasing the staggering number PS2 games we've got sitting in our back room inventory at Game Nutz, behind the cut. ( LOTS of games. ) For the benefit of those that wonder why I don't just play games at work all day. This pile from #2 is about half priced, quarter buffed. I have to price the rest of them, buff the rest of them, put all of the discs into the cabinet, then inventory all of them. I will not get it all done today. But, enumerating on LiveJournal doesn't help with that, either. * - PS2 used to also have two games on the back room shelf, but we literally ran out of space and had to cut it down to 1 - which is fine, as they went into the tote and added to our blacklist. This post is not a complaint - more just showing people, "Look, I do have a real job." |
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| Oct. 24th, 2009 @ 08:57 am Dream Journal | |||
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| Heh. I get up a full hour earlier so that I have time to run errands this morning, and then I go and have an awesome dream. Multiple parts, as always.I believe that it started off as a sort of Half-Life 2 thing. As one person was storming the castle, another infiltrator rushed on ahead in a car. No, it was more of an escape - the woman in the vehicle wasn't getting shot at at all, it was assumed that she was a civilian even as she drove around tanks and the like. There was a radio transmission about her something on the order of, "She might be a rebel," "Might need to restock on ammo." Which apparently keeps her from getting shot - since she can't shoot back. Years later, a spy for the faction that they were fighting against is following the man around. He suspects the woman, so also keeps tabs on her as well. Man and woman aren't able to find each other, though the spy knows where both are. He starts to sympathize with them, doubting his own allegiance. Finally, the man and woman meet and embrace - it's obvious that they were lovers years ago and have finally reunited. They both notice the spy looking on. The woman tosses the spy a gun. "Might need to restock on ammo," she tells him, and leaves. Though it doesn't seem to carry the connotation now (I might have the exact phrase messed up, but it was the same one as before), in the dream it was an invitation to rebel also. The atmosphere of the dream was very much inspired by the upcoming game Saboteur, which is an exciting take on the WWII game - think Splinter Cell meets Call of Duty. First one that's actually intrigued me. |
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intimidated