Month: September 2015

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since my vacation, and I’ve finally gotten caught back up enough to take a weekend off.

Vacations suck.

In my scant free time I’ve been working on lore and systems for the RP setting in SL… Which is just the dark-future of Roanoak, the place I wrote about previously…

It’s gotten hugely popular, so much so we had to acquire a second region just to have some place to build the various event scenes.

The setting is something akin to the fanific “Fallout: Equestria”, which is the horribly written bastard offspring of the Fallout game franchise, and ponies… It sounds weird, and it is, but the juxtaposition of bombed out irradiated world and Gen4 ponies actually works.

The incongruity is the selling point I think.

Anyway, the character I am using as the narrator is fun; I essentially turned my ignorance of the fanfic the setting is based upon and my technical education into a character. So I have this cloned pony who knows nothing about the world, but has this wealth of pre-apocalypse technical knowledge.

What makes the character really intriguing is that I basically created Gen4 genetics for this; actually sitting down and figuring out how the various allele groups would express the various phenotypes for the three tribes…

It’s okay, I get that blank look a lot…

Anyway, the Gen4 show dropped a bomb on everyone by literally building an episode around the fact that Earth Pony parents can give birth to Unicorn and Pegasus foals. So “pony” genetics contain the allele groups to express each variant kind of pony.

So Iridae, my character, is (was) a perfectly blank slate – a frozen zygote created for an advanced plan to try and preserve the race beyond the war.

See, to lock up a bunch of anything for 250 years to try and outlast a nuclear winter, and get around the inbreeding problem, you need like 6000 breeding pairs at the outset… That’s a lot of mouths to feed and environment to reprocess. But if you freeze most of the breeding population as zygotes you can start off with like 50, and only thaw out what you need as you need it.

The problem in Iridae’s case is that plan didn’t exactly work out… And long story short, everyone died and all but five of the zygotes were tainted by radiation. So some 200 years later the radiation in the facility had gotten low enough that the computer does what it was told, and brought the last five to term via an accelerated growth protocol… Making Iridae about 15 at the beginning of her story and with an advanced education based on pre-war sciences and technology.

Another complication is because they contain the alleles for all three tribes, and that phenotype expression comes about based on vagaries of magic from the parents – and Iridae’s ‘parents’ were technically a computer – she started out life as an oddly spindly pure white Earth Pony (the genetic baseline).

Then she found the necklace that Aurora used to wear all the time – or it found her – one or the other…

The necklace is an artifact a bit older than Aurora, and is a key entrusted to her that opens one of the prisons that contain various elemental evils that once roamed the world. But it’s also the vessel she used to contain a shred of her essence the day the bombs fell.

Given this bit of arcane trickery to try and circumvent her death, the necklace has become something of a phylactery that houses at least some of Aurora’s spirit. And once in the possession of Iridae it has supplied the required magics to cause Iridae to begin expressing tribal phenotype – specifically a Unicorn.

There is this big story about how the facility that was created to save the race actually tries to kill her for her gradual genetic deviation and how she escapes with the aid of Aurora’s ‘spirit’. This spirit cannot directly communicate with Iridae, but it can cause hallucinations and such where Aurora can pantomime what she wants to get across.

Anyway, what started with simply gaining a short, stubby horn has progressed over the last two years of Iridae’s life. And today she looks considerably different from her four siblings back in the government continuation facility.

This is not what the average Unicorn looks like in modern times, but is instead a serious throwback to what they looked like thousands of years ago. Why this is, she has no idea…

She is also struggling to learn magic. Being as she cannot internalize magic the same as the average Unicorn and must instead draw it from the world around her, she must go it alone and has to figure everything out for herself.

These days Iridae lives with a bunch of other … beings … in a place called Diablo Canyon; a ramshackle collection of shipping containers turned houses in the middle of what used to be a reservoir, but is now more of a junkyard.

Iridae is still changing though, and unbeknownst to her she is genetically progressing to match the phenotype of the first ‘pony’ she encountered – namely the Empress. The Alicorns, like the Empress, are a strange fourth tribe of incredibly long lived and rarely seen pony – a bit like the Noldor Elves of Tolkein myth, and being as I killed them all off in the war, Iridae will be the first of their kind in this brave new world.

But, it doesn’t end there – Iridae has four siblings, and once it is discovered what they can become the race will be on to capture them and turn them to whatever goals the group has, or in some cases kill them before this can happen.

We truly live in exciting times. 😉

I was teaching CompSci at Marianapolis Prep in northern Connecticut in late 2001.

I’d just come off a stint of working the Beltway in D.C. – specifically at the Pentagon as a contractor; setting up email systems for the Coast Guard on Banyan VINES just to date things. The company I’d started had run it’s course and I was basically teaching as a bit of a vacation from the pressure cooker that is D.C..

It was pretty early in the morning, and I was still getting ready for the day. I had the door to my room open and was preparing to head over to the school building across campus to get some breakfast… See, Marianapolis is a boarding school, so on top of being a teacher I was also in charge of one of the halls in St. John’s, but my class was in the afternoon so my mornings were pretty leisurely once the students were sent off at around 7am.

One of the other dorm supervisors ran in asking if I’d seen the news – something about a plane crash. I followed him down to the recreation area where the big screen TV was running the news and the admin folks from St. John’s were congregating.

There on the TV was one of the Trade Center towers on fire. It was a bit surreal, and I kept thinking it was some sort of Hollywood special effect – like something being done for a new movie or something.

The news folks were saying it was a plane crash, and I was thinking ‘private plane’ – like a Cessna or something. It was only a few minutes after the impact, so they’d not had a chance to create slick graphics and whatnot yet.

The room was just sort of quiet – no one really saying much of anything and letting the news folks fill in the silence. They started talking about hijackings, and then the second plane hit the other tower – live.

That’s when I knew this was something serious.

At this point the news became a mishmash of conjecture, opinion, and plain old guessing as the FAA turned New York into a no-fly zone.

I guess it was about an hour later that we saw the news about another plane hitting the Pentagon… At least, that’s what it sounded like. The news was in turmoil and every channel had a different set of ‘facts’. Then the FAA essentially grounded everything with wings over North America and D.C. pretty much evacuated amidst fears of more crashing airplanes.

It was then that the school released the students for the day, so I was gearing up to spend the rest of the day plying my psyche degree to help a bunch of teens deal with a pretty shocking event.

And at 1 minute to 10, just as the students were all filing into the rec room, the first tower collapsed.

Seven minutes later another plane crashed into a field and is suspected of being another terrorist situation.

Thirty minutes after that, at about 10:30, the other tower collapses.

The rest of the day was spent pretty much talking to students, organizing phone calls to family, taking phone-calls from family, and just trying to be available and present.

Through the whole thing I don’t really recall being phased – it was just this thing going on that was impacting folks that needed some tending to. But I’m not really the panic or get upset type, and the worse the situation, the more focused and non-emotional I get… Probably a military thing.

So that’s ‘where I was’ on 9/11…

Friday night was a whirlwind with the friends I had there at the convention; Imperious, Cassius, Aurkae, and Marco, and two new folks from SL that I’d never met; “Grumpy” and “Chilled Steel”. And then we found Tursi, who had flown in from China! Also, one of my roommates, Scott, went with me as I had a big room at the hotel, and Clinton also showed up and palled around for the weekend.

It was awesome. 🙂

So eventually Saturday morning rolled around, and after breakfast and coffee we wandered the convention looking at things, pricing things we thought we wanted in the dealer’s room, haunting the halls a bit, and eventually laying siege to the hotel bar – where we met Tony. Tony would become our personal waiter / bartender / hotel representative for the weekend – and he’s really a great guy.

Ask for him if you find yourself in the Hilton Anaheim. 😀

During one of the various trips through the dealer’s room I discovered that Agnes Garbowska, one of the MLP comic book artists, was doing these quick sketchy watercolors of ponies – and just had to get one!

So, here’s Ri’Hahn as doodled by Agnes Garbowska:

Saturday night I took everyone over to McCormick & Schmick’s for dinner, which was also amazing – even if Imperious did pour half a Blue Moon into my lap on accident. 😀

Sunday arrived with another breakfast and coffee session, and then we collectively descended upon the dealer’s room to snap up all the stuff we wanted at Sunday Discount prices! See, I used to sell stuff at conventions for a living back in the early 90’s – so I know all too well how it works; anything on the table after about 4pm on Sunday has to be packed, and schlepped, and checked for travel, and – it’s a pain in the butt. So you can always get dealer’s room deals on Sunday.

So Imperious got the stuffed Rainbow Dash he’d been lusting after since Friday morning. A $300 hand made one of a kind from a rather well known seamstress Rainbow Dash mind you…

Then Marco picked up the most accurate stuffed Celestia ever made – for SL’s very own Stuffed Celestia; Aurkae:

Cassius picked up a big floppy stuffed Shining Armor, and Marco not to be left out picked up a tiny stuffed Nessie – because Nessie is an honorary pony, or something. 🙂

I did not buy into the stuffed animal craze; I am above such things (and I’m still waiting for my $1500 custom 28″ tall fully pose-able accessory-laden Alicorn to be finished.)

I did pick up a second watercolor from Agnes Garbowska though; this one of the Empress herself – the world’s most famous OC Alicorn…

I also picked up this really nice sterling silver feather bookmark from a silver smith that was at the convention.

Following the buying frenzy we all headed off to the bar once more to waylay the buyer’s remorse by getting too drunk to care – only to be told that Tony was working the pool bar. So we headed off to the pool to sit outside and get hammered.

During this Marco and Imperious decided that, well, enough was never enough! And with a Mad Max-esque “WITNESSSSS MEEEEE!!” went full hooah.

Never go full hooah…

Especially when the waiter / bartender is being friendly and mixing with a very heavy hand…

The end result was Imperious blacking out and not really remembering much. And poor Marco … well … Marco ended up in the fetal position in the shower for about two hours…

All was well though! No harm done – except to maybe some pride. 😉

Once that was all resolved I called it an early night as I had to be up at 4:30 for a 6am trip to LAX.

I hate LAX…

The flight was fine though, and I made it home in one relatively large piece and am taking it easy to be ready for tomorrow… I’ve been away from work for a week – I’m not sure what I will find tomorrow, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty…

EQLA was, quite simply, illegal amounts of fun.

Literally so much happened over the last three days I cannot actually write about it all – I’d be here for a month. So I’m just going to post a few photos for posterity and note a few of the more amazing events…

So, to begin at the beginning – the convention began.

I was a ‘star sponsor’, one of the 20 people who paid large sums per ticket for the convention, so I had awesome seats, front of the line privileges, private meet and greets with the guests, a VIP mixer, room perks, and on and on… I was literally royalty for the show, which was kind of nice and apropos for the Empress of Roanoak I suppose. 😉

So from my reserved seat at the front of the auditorium the convention began:

From here I used my “Star Sponsor” powers to get into the autograph singing room before the mile long line of other fans to get this signed:

Autographs of the two ladies who created the core aspects of ‘pony’… And thus my collection is now complete. 😀

Following this I sat in for the ‘creator’s panel’, which was the first time Bonnie and Lauren actually sat down and chatted… It was, well, amazing – and culminated in this:

Lauren asked Bonnie to autograph her “My Pretty Pony”, which is the toy Bonnie designed that led to the ponies everyone is familiar with…

It was a pretty emotional thing for everyone, and I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye anywhere in that auditorium.

After this I had pretty much achieved fandom nirvana, so all that was left was to browse the dealer’s room and then spend the evening hanging out with friends.

And that was Friday! Saturday will be recounted in the next post.

I wasn’t exactly ‘prompt’ with keeping ye olde journal up to date here – I shall blame the presence of so many fun people creating so much fun stuff that I simply did not have the time and/or energy until I got home – which is now. 🙂

Picking up from the last entry; I’ve still never seen an evening show at Disney!

I tried, twice, and either the show I was intending to see only runs on weekends (Fantasmic!), or I simply ran out of steam long before the sun set… It’s okay though, something to shoot for next time.

So, anyway: Disney – day two.

I arrived at Disney bright and early Wednesday morning with the intention of doing the other half of the park; “Disney California Adventure”.

Being as I was at the park about 45 minutes before they opened for the general public, I spent some time browsing the stores and admiring the decor. As with Disneyland proper, DCA was also done up in Diamond Jubilee decorations.

And this shot is looking down one of the themed streets leading towards the Hollywood Tower ride…

The park was not quite open yet, so all of those people standing in front of the trolley are waiting for the rope to drop. And about half of the apparent length of the street is the clever Hollywood style backdrop back there. 🙂

So my first ride of the day was the afore mentioned Hollywood Tower, which is essentially an elevator from hell housed in a really well themed hotel-like building occupied by Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone”.

From here I wandered through Bug’s Land and into Cars Land with the intention of riding the Radiator Springs Racers ride.

This is a really fun ride, and quite the technical marvel – but the line is always like an hour long… But the blue car I was in won the race, which makes the wait worth it. 😀

After this I walked over to the main part of the park, Paradise Pier, which is the area most people have seen at one time or another.

My goal here was the roller-coaster known as “California Screamin’”…

This is a really long coaster – probably the best ride to line ratio in the world! I love it.

Unfortunately by the time I got here I was simply beat from an day and a half of hiking around in the California sunshine… So I got my ride and then hiked my way around the opposite side of the park to finish the circuit at the stores just inside the gates. I took the time to buy some 60th anniversary swag and then retreated to the hotel to have dinner and rest up for the convention.

Well, yesterday was kind of rediculously fun.

Anaheim is kind of an odd place in that even if you sleep in until 7am, you still can’t really do anything for another two to three hours… The place really doesn’t ‘open’ until 10am.

Having been to Disney before, I knew pretty much how things were going to work when the ropes dropped, so I entered the park at about 9:30 then piddled around the stores along Main Street USA for about 20 minutes, before casually making my way over to the Tomorrowland entrance. They dropped the rope, the Voice Of God on the P.A. opened the park, and I strolled over to Space Mountain to get a SpeedPass first, then waited about ten minutes for the first run of the day.

When the ride finished, everyone who was there took off for the rest of the park because the speedpass wouldn’t ‘activate’ for another 10 mintues – so I got back into the line and walked pretty much right back onto to loading area for ride number two. And when ride two completed the slowpokes were arriving and making the line quite long – but the speedpass kicked in and I walked back into the loading area for round three.

I pondered going for a fourth ride, but my breakfast was threatening to come back to haunt me if I didn’t stop being stupid. 🙂

From there I wandered over to The Matterhorn, which is right next door and did a quick run on that.

I need to mention here that September first and second are like the best time of the year to visit Disney – because school just went back into session pretty much everywhere. So the park is nothing but strollers – which presents its own challenge – but the lines for the bigger attractions are 10-15 minutes long at worst. 🙂

So continuing my counter-clockwise run of the park I walked past the castle, took a photo of Small World sign (and the sign is exactly the same as the first time I was here – probably on purpose), and walked though toontown real quick (still not impressed with it) before ending up in Frontierland and getting in line for Big Thunder Mountain.

Once satisfied with Big Thunder, it was break time – so I got the customary frozen Lemonade and hopped ontop the Mark Twain riverboat for a sit down and unwind around the lake.

Once onboard I got to talking to the throttleman about his boat, and he seemed really happy to have someone take an interest in his rather gorgeous machine. I love the ‘living’ nature of steam engines as they look and sound like living creatures, and this one was no different.

Break time over, it was back to the rides – next up on my route was Pirates of the Carribean…

My timing was perfect, by the way. See, I have this routine that gets me to this part of the park just as it is starting to get stupidly hot becuse the next few rides are all indoors, dark, air conditioned, and slower paced. So after hearing about how dead men tell no tales – repeatedly – it was around the corner to The Haunted Mansion!

Which was closed. 🙁

From here it is on to the last ride in my loop which is the infamous Indiana Jones ride.

I love this ride for its high-tech wizardry of motion controlled cars, projection, and sound. This is also the last ride on my loop, and from here I headed back to the hotel to rest, get some dinner, and then come back for the evening shows! Which I will detail in the next post.