The blog is http://artofmanliness.com/ just wanted to send that out.

Seems like it will be a long way off before I get the chance but I can always look forward to getting out and leaving the tech behind.

I have been thumbing my way through the first issue of “Voyages” the club magazine for The Federation and it has been great to read so far. I am not half way through it yet and if it wasn’t for work interfering I would read it all in one sitting. The one down side is there is not a local club to me… Well, technically there is one just the other side of Toronto but that is a bit of a drive from Waterloo.

I have yet to sit down with the magazine from Starfleet International. I also believe I have to wait to get my username and password in the mail before I can access the members only sections of the website. They do have a group that meets closer to me in Guelph but the website for that group has not been updated in a while so I am not holding my breath. Over the next couple of days I will be updating the website with the thoughts that I have between the two different organizations.

Right now I am still waiting for my account to go active so I will be able to log in when I get home tonight. Though it might be after a quick stop by future shop to get firefly on Blu-Ray.

The third day of the con is when I was able to see two people on the main stage and get autographs from two people as well.

The first person to hit the main stage was Ethan Phillips. He was great, he interacted with the crowd and always had a story when there was a lull in the questions that were being asked. He mentioned how he has always been fascinated with acting from even a very young age. All in all it was a good presentation.

The second person to hit the main stage was Alaina Huffman. You could tell that she has not done many conventions, she had a short 15 minute talk and then opened it up for questions. She was very honest and very friendly about the questions that were asked, but when there was a lull in the questions she was not interjecting funny anecdotes. This lead to the same people asking a lot of questions but they were all good questions in my opinion.

From there it was off to the autograph sessions. Much to my surprise there was not much of a lineup for autographs on the Sunday afternoon. I was able to get right in line for Alaina Huffman but while there was a special needs gentleman ahead of me to go see Mark Sheppard since there was no one in line for him. Pleasant guy, the only downside is I was spaced out a little and had to be reminded to pay. But other than that it was a good day all around.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the closing ceremonies due to needing to get on the road and back home. But they have already announced a guest that I would like to see for next year. Armin Shimerman, so thoughts are high that I will be going to Polaris 25.

I was able to attend the Q and A with Mark Sheppard and it was good, he spoke of his experiences with the shows that he has been on, Firefly being cancelled, and why Battlestar Galactica was able to have a full run (the difference between a cable network and a major network). One of the fun comments that he made was he mentioned he was reminded of a Canadian joke. “How do you get 100 Canadians out of a pool? Could you please get out of the pool.” There is something lost in the writing down of the joke and the context in which it was told.

After those two events I just chilled in the hotel and spent way too much in the dealers room, but what the hell, I think I made good purchases. Then it was off to have my picture taken with Mark Sheppard. He wasn’t as nice as Ethan but as I mentioned in my last post I had quite a long conversation with him. I was then off to the autograph room to get my picture with Ethan signed. That was a straight forward process and he had a few people waiting.

After checking out the dealers room for a second time it was time to get a picture taken with Alaina Huffman. I must say…. TV does not do her justice, she is much prettier in person, she was great and friendly another photo that made my day.

Plans for tomorrow? I am going to go and attend the Q and As for Ethan Phillips and Alaina Huffman. Then it will be off to the autograph room to get the  last two autographs that I want. Am I planning to stay for the closing ceremonies? Still not sure on that one. I would like to avoid the rush of when everyone else leaves and try to keep my car from overheating on the drive home. I guess I will try and gauge when others leave and make my plans from there.

The first session that I went to was Emergent Internet A.I. The main panellist for the session was Robert J. Sawyer the writer of "Flash Forward” the talk was excellent as the topics that were covered was the total amount of storage needed to have an artificial intelligence develop on the internet, how would it manifest itself, what would the reception be, and then there were some questions about how it would be used and if it would be given free reign over its own existence.

The second session that I went to was Kirktinuity and that was discussing the nature of Star Trek cannon in regards to the new movie vs. The Original Series. It started off not too bad but it was starting to get to be to much of a geek fest and I decided to leave early and go to the Blastoff party.

I paid extra to attend the Blastoff party. All of the multi-day guests are contracted to be there. I was able to speak with Robert J. Sawyer, Ethan Phillips, Mark Sheppard, and Kai Owens. To be honest I haven’t had a chance to see torchwood, but the conversation between Kai Owens and Mark Sheppard was excellent, they were discussing the season format between North America and England. The comparison of the 6-12 episode seasons of England vs the 22-24 episode seasons that we are used to here in North America. I never really understood the difference until I was able to hear this discussion. It makes complete sense to me now where they only have one story arc for the season.

I was able to discuss Smartphone technology with Robert J. Sawyer and Ethan Phillips, we were discussing the iPhone and the droid and some of the different features. We discussed how Research In Motion is a Canadian company and try as I might I was not able to get a plug in for the BlackBerry.

I need to look at the schedule for tomorrow and finish selecting the panels that I want to go to. Just trying to make my life easier.

Once 7:30 rolled around I called and made an appointment for my car to go into a dealership here to have it looked at. On the way to the dealership there we no issues with the car coming close to overheating and when I found that they were going to charge me $100 just to get the car into the shop plus any work done to the car to resolve the issue I decided that it wasn’t worth it to get something looked at the wasn’t guaranteed to be found and with no idea of what it would cost to get it fixed.

I left the dealership and made my way back to the hotel, once I was in stop and go traffic the car started to overheat again. This is going to be a fun trip home after the weekend is finished the hour and a half trip may take about 3 hours. /shrug Life sucks sometimes. I do need to take the car in to have a cooling system flush done on it and that may be what resolves the issue. /crosses fingers

Still trying to decide if I am going to volunteer to help with the con setup today. It’s either that or a nap. That will be decided within the next hour or so.

I should be posting some regular updates as the weekend goes on.

Excuse me? Since when is Harry Potter anywhere close to science? Did I stumble across the website for the new Ontario Magic Center? Oh, wait… I just checked, there is no such place. I know that the science center has to attract people and with school being out it is a great time to get kids through the door.

There are a few other topics that I think they could have done and still stayed within the Harry Potter theme. The biggest one being how the film was created. Let the kids sit on a fake quiddich? broom and put them in-front of a green screen and let them go. I have only seen one of the Harry Potter movies so I do not claim to be an expert but I’m just not a fan.

The downside to the new system is Blizzard will be rolling the system out to the WoW forums. They have stated that this will reduce trolling as a person’s name will be associated with the post and not just a random character name. I guess this will work but there are some people who will just not care. I really haven’t used the community forums other than to keep up with what has been happening on my server. But a good point was brought up, people can choose to not post on the majority of the forums, but when people are pointed to the forums to help with the resolution of any technical issues that choice is taken away.

According to what I have seen online Blizzard customer support is going to at least slow down on pointing people towards the forums and find another way to help people with technical issues.

Time will tell, I have come close to cancelling my account due to the lack of playing and interest. I may use that as a platform to voice my issues with real id on the forums and maybe in general, I don’t know yet.