That. Was. AWESOME!

My boyfriend and I were in Seattle from Thursday to Monday at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) .

IT
WAS
AWESOME!

Other than our horrible and I mean HORRIBLE flight screwing-overs, of course. Let me touch briefly on that. We booked a month and a half in advance for a direct flight to Seattle from Philly and back. No problem. Around $400 a person. A few weeks before the event they email us telling us they've changed our flight, which now gets us in later than some of our plans. We had to call and change...that was bad enough, but we almost ALMOST missed our connecting flight in Las Vegas on the way home (we ran through the airport, but fortunately the flight out of LV was also delayed about 15 minutes, which allowed us to get our baggage transferred too-- hooray!), and we still got in at midnight EST. We would have gotten in at 6am had we missed that flight, all because they cannot keep their freakin word and give us the direct flights we paid for. Oh, and did you know they have ads the entire way on planes now and you have to pay for like ANY in flight food? Ok.... end rant about the plane flight.

Thursday we went to a "pre-PAX" dinner at P.F. Changs which was awesome. We met some Canadians at our table and had tasty food and got free appetizers. Afterwards, we crashed because of all the wonderful jet lag.

Friday we went and took the Underground Tour of Seattle, took lots of pictures, etc, then we went to the con a wee bit late. It opened at 2, we got there at about 1:45 and because of the line we didnt get in until around 2:45. Lots of DS playing. We rushed to the first theater to see some speed runs of games, then we lined up and got to see Wil Wheaton as the keynote speaker! We checked out the exhibition hall (I ran into my ex and that was kind of awkward). Then we chilled for the rest of the night.

Saturday was even awesomer. We watched people pitch their game ideas to a judge's panel. I went to a short panel on the "History of Guild Wars", but I didn't get to stay the whole time because we left to watch the Assassin's Creed Live Demo! Then it was a little bit of "I'm Getting Old When Life Cuts Into Gaming", focusing on how to balance and intertwine your "real life" and games. Then we took a nap and ate dinner before the concert of: John Coulton, MC Frontalot (OMG OMG OMG) and the Minibosses from 8-2am.  It was awesome, but my back and feet were killing me by the time we got back to the hotel. Also, can someone PLEASE tell the artists not to request that the thousands of smelly nerds raise their arms?

Sunday we watched a round of gaming Family Feud as our wrap up, and we dined at the Space Needle which wasn't even revolving that night, but it was still good.

Monday we came home. I happened to meet and sit behind Tom Fulp, Founder and C.E.O of Newgrounds on the flight home from Las Vegas, which I didn't even realize until now. Awesome!

Hooray for vacation!

P.S. In other less important news, I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I've started reading the rest of the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. Yay!

Books and Games and Anime - Oh My!

I really will miss Harry Potter once I'm done the last book. It's flying by and I'm about 1/3 of the way done. There has already been one death and many of the scenes are so incredibly vivid and capturing that I don't realize that 40 pages have passed by in the blink of an eye... If it weren't for the pesky thing called "a job", I would have finished it in a day.

Of course, there are other things to worry about, like all the other games that I'm in the middle of. Okami, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Hotel Dusk, Pokemon Pearl, not to mention Guild Wars and Diablo II that I've suddenly gotten back into.

Samurai Champloo is the current "active" anime. I've already watched it once, but my boyfriend is watching it for the first time. I certainly don't mind watching it again. AWESOME anime- another one of those one-season wonders.

My head is going to explode with all the media intake. But that's nothing compared to next week.

PAX

Oh I am so going. I am so staying in the Sheraton right across from the convention center. I am SO going to the pre-PAX dinner. I am SO going to the nerdcore show and squealing at MC Frontalot, and I am SO going to eat in the revolving restaurant in the Space Needle.

I'm going to pee my pants. Does that count as more than 3oz of liquid? Will the TSA take my pants if I pee them?

Two Strikes for Amazon

This is strike two, Amazon.

I preordered HP and the Deathly Hallows before noon on the date required (July 17th) to get "guaranteed delivery". I wasn't banking on getting it then- I'm no Potterphile- but it would be nice to have it on the day of release so I don't hear spoilers, I thought.

So they ship the other portion of my order-- Kushiels Justice-- and I received that book. The 21st comes and goes. No shipment of Harry Potter. What the heck?

I check the estimated delivery date. July 28th-30th. Huh? Okay....so I check the help site. It claims that you must have ordered standard or prime shipping to get the book guaranteed on Saturday. Nowhere on my order form when I submitted it did it state that particular fact, or I would have been sure to choose standard shipping.

It's not THAT big of a deal, though, but it irks me that it's July 26th and it hasn't shipped yet How do they expect to meet the expected shipment date? So I e-mailed Customer Service about
it. They responded with what I thought: since I chose free shipping I wasn't guaranteed delivery on the 21st and my order was being prepared for shipment now. 

I get a shipping confirmation this morning. I go to track my package and they had changed the estimated delivery date to the 28th-31st. Again, not THAT big of a deal but all of this put together just bugs the crap out of me. Amazon used to be dependable and super fast and that seems to have gone out the window. Way to drop the ball. You'd better be glad I'm not a crazed Harry Potter fan!

For enlightenment, the first strike was when I preordered Guild Wars Nightfall. I was supposed to get a key to be able to play it two days earlier than everyone since I preordered. Amazon had nothing set up to give those out, in fact, I got the game several days after it had come out. So why did I PREORDER!? I'm never preordering a game from them again. Looks like books are out of the question too.