rin3y.lj

"the number you have dialed..."

2009-01-07T18:58:09Z

Well sir, LiveJournal's circling the drain. Saw that coming! So, after seven years here at rin3y.livejournal.com, I'm moving!

New blog can be found here: rineysoft.com/blog

All the old stuff is moved, for the most part. Voiceposts and embedded movies will go over in a bit. I'll leave this place running until they turn the lights off, but everything new goes to the new site. Commenting is disabled here to keep things in sync.

Bye!

neat!

2008-11-18T05:07:54Z

Some press coverage of my startup, MileMeter, on KVUE in Dallas -

http://www.kvue.com/video/?nvid=303692

I like seeing my little Prototype-enhanced pulldown boxes on TV :)

Okay enough of that stuff. Saw Quantum of Solace this Saturday - while I wasn't blown away, I didn't hate it. It had some serious pacing and assembly issues - it didn't quite hang together right as an action flick. This being said I hadn't actually seen Casino Royale before, much to the derision of my companions. So I saw that too, and it's clearly superior. I still didn't hate Quantum, though. I guess my Bond standards are actually pretty low - give me a few exotic locales, shoot some stuff, womanize a bit, and I'm generally happy - which is why I suppose Casino was so exceedingly good but Quantum managed to squeak in as just adequate.

The main reason I saw Quantum was to see the trailer for the new Star Trek, which was resoundingly disappointing. I guess I have to wait for the next go-around to have hope for good Trek again. What's the old rule of thumb about odd-numbered Treks being awful?

aaaaaaaaand.... done

2008-11-05T06:11:08Z

Well, the guy I voted for didn't win. So it goes. I am encouraged by the equal levels of grace demonstrated by McCain in his concession, and by Obama in his acceptance of same. I'm hopeful that perhaps the national discourse could gain some long overdue maturity. The entire concept of "not my President" is ridiculous and needs to die. Half of the country turning their backs on the rest because their side is not in power is shameful. We've had four presidential terms of that. Obama will become the next President, and I will respect and support him.

There is nothing wrong with cheering for the home team!

in this twilight

2008-11-03T04:13:40Z

Whoa... abandoned blog. 'Scuse me while I blow off some dust and cut the lights back on.

Halloween weekend was generally full of win. Friday, we went downtown. I, for lack of better ideas, put on my Southern gentleman outfit... thanks Momma Rin3y for getting that in order. I had thought there was going to be a little more variety in my group's costumes though, so unfortunately it ended up being either pimps, santas, santa pimps, Mrs. Santa Pimp....or me in civil war era eveningwear. Hm.

Anyway, we went to Tsunami for dinner, discovering therein that using chopsticks while wearing formal gloves is sort of tricky. Then we went to Vickery's and pretty much camped out. It wasn't extravagantly interesting - we ended up back home by midnight. Ah well!

Saturday we road-tripped up to Greenville to see Nine Inch Nails. I had seen them before, the last time they came to G'Ville, but the new tour, called "Lights In The Sky", completely reset the bar in terms of live shows. The technical aspects of it were staggering; they had the best visual effects I've seen in a live show to date. I'll have some cheesy iPhone pics in a bit, as soon as it quits misbehaving. Overall great concert experience; some minor testosterone-related thrashing during the faster songs, making necessary a bit of blocking for the lady among our group, but generally a well-behaved (if smoky) crowd. I did get smacked around quite a bit by the long hair of the girl standing next to me, headbanging. Her hair smelled really good though, so I didn't see fit to complain.

Before and after the show, we attended the City Tavern, a location made remarkable in my mind by its offerings of frozen Jager bomb slushies. These were well-received. We also got dinner ahead of time at Trio, which had excellent food and frighteningly efficient and friendly service. Recommended.

We got back to the hotel, and I had a waking dream about the chair next to the bed melting. The next day, we wandered in search of breakfast. We found a little cafe, Cafe Paris, with a good menu, and placed an order. There wasn't a properly sized table inside, so we went out onto the street and sat down at one of the outside tables. Presently, a bartender with pink eyeshadow and a voice like a Marlboro factory on fire came out and told us that the table, indeed, belonged to their establishment, Sharkey's, and that we couldn't sit there once they opened in a half-hour or so. We thanked her for the knowledge. Immediately thereafter, the manager came out and asked us to leave forthwith, owing to some manner of upset with the owner of the cafe. We, seeking happy compromise, offered to buy a round of drinks once their establishment opened, making us legit customers. No, said the manager, our obvious intention to give them money in exchange for their goods and services disinteresting to them. Huh. So we buggered off back to the cafe and pushed some tables together. In summation, Cafe Paris in Greenville was cute and pleasant with quite reasonable upscale-ish cafe food. Sharkey's, next door, is staffed by uncompromising assholes and you should never ever go there (I have it on good authority that it's a shithole anyway). Epilogue to this, when we left the cafe 20 minutes after Sharkey's opening time, not a single one of their outdoor tables, including the one we were at, had a single customer at them.

and he'll fly away

2008-10-13T15:59:40Z

Ah, good weekend. Any weekend is good, after not having one for about three weeks...

Friday I saw Thank God and Jucifer at the Pour House. Jucifer continues to be my favorite heavy, obnoxious, brain-pummeling metal band. Thank God from Columbia was pretty interesting too; sort of Converge-ish, but with lots of polyrhythmic, time-change-every-two-seconds stuff.

Saturday was Josh's "Keg and Cake" party for his birthday. I imagine the presentation had to be a little odd - drunk people laughing loudly on the front porch as the rain poured down, and me playing Pink Floyd on a banjo.

Sunday I went to Taste of Charleston at Boone Hall. It rained before and after, but not so much during, which was helpful. What wasn't super helpful was the fact that we sat in traffic for a half hour not moving as the rain neatly irrigated the dirt roads into soup. Note to self, next time you go muddin', don't do it in a FWD sport sedan with 5 inches of ground clearance. The traction control had to work overtime, and I started to get sideways a few times, but overall I kept it out of the ruts and didn't bog once. Gooooooooood car.

ch-ching!

2008-10-08T00:07:16Z

My startup, MileMeter, has officially launched.

Last 7 months of life - validated!

Here's to ridiculous levels of success and fat stacks of cheddar.

well thank goodness.

2008-10-04T20:32:43Z

“So there are some things in here that have been added since the other day that are very important. Legislation has passed the House over and over again, but never could make it through the Senate, and now it has. That doesn’t take away from the fact that we’ve been dealt a mighty bad hand—the core part of this legislation. But it has been improved; it is a compromise, but it is just a start."

-- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, speaking on the addition of 150 billion dollars worth of bullshit to the financial market bailout (source: congressional record via http://speaker.house.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=0855)

"Fuck that, and fuck you!"

-- Noted commentator John Riney upon reading this quote

Mmm chunks

2008-09-27T01:33:36Z

Mmm chunks, originally uploaded by rin3y.

--riney

Backing up.

2008-09-25T18:34:58Z

Doing a Time Machine backup of my work box. Domo-kun stands guard.

Two cool points will be awarded if you can correctly tell me why I named the drive "Jenolan".

Straight outta nocash

2008-09-25T01:48:07Z

Straight outta nocash, originally uploaded by rin3y.

Well?

2008-09-24T23:41:31Z

concerning Renaissance faires

Rachel: its all the best things about dcon, same costumes for the most part AND there's giant turkey legs, jousting and minstrels
John Riney: same costumes? stormtroopers?
John Riney: :)
Rachel: shaddup

Yum, charred flesh

2008-09-24T00:47:57Z

Yum, charred flesh, originally uploaded by rin3y.

--riney

Domo?

2008-09-18T02:52:35Z

They have Domo-kun at Target now. I couldn't help but buy one. Think of the kittens!

don't look back in anger

2008-09-09T03:02:01Z

Left work today hungry. I decided I'd wing by the Tavern for a few of their good hot dogs. "Look over there," said friendly barkeep Bonnie, gesturing towards a small buffet installed past the stage. "Grab all you want." It was free hot dog Monday! Huzzah!

I went and saw Sevendust last Thursday. From the composition of the crowd, I knew immediately that these were the sort of folks that were going to form a pit in short order. For some annoying reason, the pit always forms directly in front of me, and I always end up doing ad-hoc security for some random herd of smaller people that hide behind my towering bulk. It's a useful task, so I suppose I don't mind so badly. Good deed or no, I'd much rather be watching the show than watching for random flying torsos to deflect. As pits go, this one was pretty well-intentioned; lots of people wanting to thrash around and release all that pent-up aggro they get after working a double at the paper mill or the deer processing plant, but only a couple out-and-out "hay yew, let's fahght" dumbasses.

The best part was this drunk-as-hell older blonde lady who brought a whole tray of shots and beers. I gladly accepted one just before the first song, at which point she got hit - and the two remaining beers went airborne. So I got one shot, and one beer, although the shot was in my stomach and the beer was in my shirt. She eventually got bounced for her own safety.

The worst part was when this gigantic, tattooed, goateed, *shirtless* blob of fleshmeat came flying at me, backwards. I went in for the block with both hands, but he was so disgustingly slippery my hands went *splork* and slid from his back to his head. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeugh shudder must wash so dirty.

I made it through the entire set without being knocked down! That is, until 30 seconds from the end of the last encore. Whoops.

DC 2008: after-action report

2008-09-08T15:30:10Z

Ah, Dragoncon. It always takes about a week for the fuzzed recollections and utter sensory overload to settle down into something properly describable in English.

Thursday started at about 6:30 at Pete's house. Riding from there to the Myers, we had a short wait to receive the van, then we got loaded out.

Putting all my crap in the Bag O'Death definitely helped out my state of mind during this process. ("Do you have your mask?" "In the bag." "How about your suit?" "In the bag." "Wing Kong?" "Bag." etc.)

We rolled out on time, and spent the intervening hours of the trip with jokes, iPods, napping, and making the all-important post-arrival shopping list.

I could, and did, has cheezburger:

So did Pete, but he left his phone on the tray...

Nobody in the restaurant paid much mind until he yelled out "BUT I'M STILL HUNGRY!", which resulted in a restaurant-wide LOL.

Moving like some sort of insane, drunken strike team, we pulled through the hotel the first time and dropped off an advance squad of two to get us checked in. The rest of us proceeded to secure food and our keg.

Here I am on keg guard duty:

Then, back to the hotel to load in...

Notice the desert tan bag-o-death front and center. Then, up to the room for all-important keg-figuration...

After this was LineCon 2008. Not much better than ever, unfortunately. There has got to be a better statistical distribution of ticket windows possible such that the line that *I'm* in isn't wrapped around itself three times and the line for "Xyzzy" has one guy eating a burger and doing nothing...

Then we had to hustle - we were linking up with elements of Wolf Pack Elite to regale the con with the Chang Sing/Wing Kong battle from Big Trouble in Little China.

And this led us to my first big embarrassment moment of the con. We went to High Velocity, the built-in bar/restaurant thingy in the Mariott, to grab some quick apps before meeting up with WPE. Walter Koenig was just paying his bill and leaving as we were sitting down. Then I happened to look to the bar to notice a slim redhead sipping a drink, flanked by two guys. Hey, is that? I think... holy crap is... gnaah! I swear to crap it was Felicia Day. Except it wasn't. Had I been, oh, I dunno, *not* retarded, I would have remembered that the real Felicia was out on the West Coast at PAX. But I temporarily forgot that tiny detail, because, as Pete described it, you could actually see my brain vibrating behind my ears. What can I say, I fanboy out from time to time. What made it *really* confusing is when I went up and asked, as calmly as I could manage, "Excuse me, but you look so familiar; is your name Felicia?" (and hopefully it didn't come out in Huttese: "BLARRRGHGH ARRG ARARGGH ARGH!"), she replied, "Well, kind of," - it turns out she cosplays a character from...er... I think it was Night Stalkers... whose name is Felicia. But if she ever wanted to do a Penny costume from Dr. Horrible, she'd have it nailed.

So then we did the BTLC run, briefly. The Wolfpack guys and girls are machines - we ran that costume for maybe 45 minutes, and they dispersed to go do other costumes. I'd have trouble keeping up! But it was great while we did it. We got some great battle footage for the highlight reel (which should be posted here in a day or so)

Now *this* is a group!

We ran around some more, and ended the evening with some concertage.

Friday started off with lunch with my newly-discovered "fifth" cousin, Sara Riney. We're not sure on the exact relation, but she's definitely family - we got on great. She's an Atlanta Rollergirl - former player, currently team manager/PR. Rineys kick ass! We had lunch at this place, Ria's Bluebird... the food was *amazing*. I had this chicken pot-pie thing, which was less pie, more a bowl of industrial-thick chicken soup with homemade biscuits floating atop. It was incredible, not to mention perfect hangover food...

We had a nice tour of the Little Five Points area, which was great - neat stores, bars, and neat Victorian architecture.

Skull!

Not too much after that, it was time to invade Benihanas... it's tradition... the restaurant trembles in anticipation.

88s, 88s, 88s. Handing out cards, ribbons, masks, posing, yelling, the whole thing. You gotta be there. 'Con loves the 88, and the 88 love the con.

Leeloos at con are always so cheerful. I love them. "Leeloo Dallas, multipass."

I only saw one Chell with requisite Weighted Companion Cube.

Plenty Doctors, though.

The Protomen show was might impressive.

Kraken of the Wolfpack stopped by the room with a gang of friends, so we had some awesome room party goodness. The Firefly Sweet Tea and my homemade blueberry-infused Stolichnaya went over dang well.

Saturday, we started off the day with some week-old dog meat at Fuji Express. I'm not kidding. It was rotting.

Oh, and we got yelled at by the housekeeping lady. She cursed extravagantly in a language I didn't recognize, then she threw a bunch of trash bags at my head. "THIS MY HOUSE! YOU PICK UP TRASH! YOU PUT IN BAG! YOU DO EVERY DAY!" Um... I guess she had cleaned one too many trashed congoer room and snapped.

Joker's Gang and Bat-Vigilantes -

Bradle pulled off pretty much the best Joker I saw there.

Newki as murdered Bat-Vigilante, B-B-Brian Douglas -

An XKCD fan! *hearts*

Whoa, am I a sucker for Jessica Rabbit...

Note to self - when trying to be smoove, for heaven's sake, take the fucking clown mask off the back of your head.

Sunday, Battle Damaged/Hospitalized 88. This photo basically describes how wearing this rig felt.

There's more to it you can't see. I had a sake IV!

The disorientation from wearing a one-eye costume came back with a vengeance. Brad was pretty much leading me around everywhere, keeping me from knocking people down, a kindness I'm thankful for. Once we got to the Wolfpack party, an interesting thing happened. My one remaining eye started hurting violently - pencil-in-eyeball type feelings. I got nauseous, and most unsettlingly, my vision started doing amusing end-over-end, TV-with-bad-V-Hold rolls. And I hadn't even been drinking! Well, I take that back, I had been drinking, but lightly, not wanting to add any additional uncoordination to my lack of depth-perception. I took the eyepatch off, instantly felt better. So I rested for a few minutes in the backstage VIP, then put it back on and kept wandering. Back it came, worse! So off came the eye rig permanently. I was fine from then on, but I think I've decided against eye-covering rigs for now on.

The mood at the WPE party was different from last year, which was more amateur and light-hearted. This year was a straight-up strip club vibe. Not to say it was worse, just very different. As dunemanic sagely put it, the mood was a bit more "slut-tacular".

The Wolfpack guys were great to us. They hooked us up with coveted black armbands, which gave us access to the backstage, VIP area where the free booze was, and the dancers were hanging out. Score! Thanks so much to all those guys for really making us feel welcome.

Daft Punk guy! Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger!

A bad idea captured in action! Don't do it, Beeland!

We saw a couple wearing those amazing aluminum-pneumatic wings I posted here some time ago. They're amazing in person. I kinda want to make some myself...

Monday, groaning, load-out, road trip, nap.

Overall it was a great year, but not my favorite. Overall it felt like there were less costumes and more people in civilian clothes. The late-night rave scene was minimal to nonexistent. The Con security situation was far better, owing to the reduction in crowding having four complete, working hotels afforded. We have, of course, had after-action discussions as to directions and enhancements for next year.

Bracelet

2008-09-03T03:31:28Z

Bracelet, originally uploaded by rin3y.

--riney

Glass from Riney's South Seas Bar and Lounge

2008-09-03T01:45:15Z

Glass from Riney's South Seas Bar and Lounge, originally uploaded by rin3y.

How classy does this place sound? Thanks cousin!

--riney

DC Day 1

2008-08-29T21:24:29Z

Thursday pics are up, and a couple from today. I also got to meet one of my cousins today! Hurray for meeting on Flickr!

Just before first light

2008-08-27T23:10:20Z

Just before first light, originally uploaded by rin3y.

--riney

AAAAH

2008-08-27T05:20:55Z

Rounding the final corner on DC prep. I've got all the stuff I'm bringing layed out on the dresser so as to be able to see it's all there before I load it into the Bag O' Death (tm).

Still have to make a quick run to the hardware store, the grocery store, and the pharmacy to put together a last-minute prop idea for Hospitalized 88. Fortunately, all these things are right next to each other (nearly). Need to do one more load of laundry, and final assembly on the cleavers in the morning, plus I have to pick up dry cleaning and a pair of black pants. Apparently everybody on the planet is a size 38 32, because that's nearly all that three Target stores had... Tomorrow's going to be busy!

Work was mildly hectic. I've been pushing myself to get feature-complete, so I was up until 3:30 or so pounding out something in prep for a demo that happened today. That went generally okay.

I have a new memory card - 16GB! - being shipped to the hotel, so expect mad video footage.

Yep.

2008-08-25T01:31:04Z

Yep., originally uploaded by rin3y.

0822080041a.jpg

2008-08-22T04:42:08Z

0822080041a.jpg, originally uploaded by rin3y.

DC 08 Final Prep List

2008-08-18T16:15:06Z

great crispity Jeebus. I have some things to do by next week! At least I started earlier than last year.

In case you can't read the scribbles, that reads:

~~Card order~~
~~Replace gi~~
Get ~~red cord~~, weapon
~~Fix sword~~
~~dryclean suit~~ (dropped off 8/22, gotta pick up)
New black pants, ~~white shirt~~, ~~ties, black shoes~~
First aid, ~~blood, eyeball~~
~~Quad Damage vodka~~ (stewin', 8/21)
~~Joker gang eye makeup?~~ (getting from Pete)
Final loadout
~~Clean camera, fix lappy~~ (done, 8/22)
~~Down payment~~ (taken care of with Josh, 8/22)
~~Mend duffle bag~~(no need, it'll hold)

edited! i'm productive already
edited again: the fear is setting in (8/21)

pliability

2008-08-15T17:49:00Z

First, in the "holy crap" department...

Second, in the "holy crap, look at those" department, I went to the finals of the Budweiser Bikini Bash out at the Windjammer last weekend. It was, as to be expected, a somber and solemn affair, with the contestants being judged on their knowledge of the Neoclassical period in Western art, the singing of arias, and a hands-on demonstration of the lively art of cross-stitch. Um, yeah.

click photo for gallery

Third, to help spread the genius that is Rick Astley to all areas, I have concieved of this invention:

vlog

2008-08-05T13:09:37Z