Waiting in lines

How long would you wait for something you want to buy? Would you sit outside in the middle of November waiting for a store to open at midnight simply to purchase this item?

Well gamers certainly would. Gamestop, the video game retailer titan that has bought out most of its former competition (RIP EB Games, Funcoland and others), has fairly regular midnight releases for big name titles.

Most recently it was Call of Duty: Black Op II. Now the Call of Duty series has rough 9 titles in the main series now, and to me they all seem pretty much the same, except for the various accents of the people you're shooting.

But, every time these midnight releases lead to lines like this...

And crowds like this...

So how long would you camp out to be one of the first to get what you want? I guarantee there's a nerd out there who has waited longer.

Space Janitors

A new show started on the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel this week called Space Janitors.

Ever wonder who cleans up the toilets on the Death Star? How about, who takes the bodies of all the fallen Stormtroopers? Well Space Janitors follows the "adventures" of two janitors in space. The first episode is actually pretty funny. Check it out.

Darth Mickey

So I'm a little behind on this news, but last week Disney bought the rights to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises from George Lucas, (along with the random other rights that come with his production company Lucasfilm) for 4.05 billion dollars (Full article HERE). They plan to begin working on the next Star Wars almost immediately, doing an entire new trilogy starting will "Episode 7" tentatively set for release in 2015.

Now, I'll admit that the the thought of a new Star Wars movie makes my inner geek excitedly squirm like a kid who has to pee. However, I'm not without reservations about it.

I think the majority of the world will agree that the prequel trilogy of Episodes I, II & III did not necessarily live up to the world's standards, so I doubt anyone is too concerned that George Lucas will only act as a consultant for the new sequels.

These two may go down in history as the the worst things to happen to Star Wars (Fun side note, check out THIS ARTICLE to find out what happened to that poor kid, Jake Lloyd, after his turn as Anakin).

And Disney certainly has the money and the production power to take on a series of this magnitude. But we all must not forget that Disney has not had great success with their recent ventures into Science Fiction (**cough** John Carter **cough**) and sequels are not necessarily their strong suit either.

Seriously, did anybody care about any of these? Except maybe Return of Jaffar.

But I digress. Now owning both Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm, Disney is turning into quite the nerd super power. All we can do now is hope and pray that Disney won't screw up this beloved series even further.

What is your opinion? Disney Star Wars: Good or Bad?

Cracked Head

Today's blog is on the website Cracked.com. Cracked is a website where you can find hilarious articles on just about anything. I've spent the last 2 hours perusing their section on video games and I've been laughing my ass off.

The best part is that the articles Cracked reports on are all true. Its not satire like The Onion, these are actual real things written by funny people in hilarious ways.

For instance you can check out 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted to find out how Microsoft has done research very similar to drug testing on rats to determine the best way to get people to keep playing their games.

Or you could read The 7 Biggest D*** Moves in the History of Online Gaming to learn how a team of players spent an entire year planning and executing the assassination of another player in the game, costing him in game items worth roughly $16,500.

For my non-nerd readers who are looking at this blog because they have to for class, I encourage you to browse some of Cracked's other, less nerdy articles like The 8 Most Excessively Disturbing Public Health Campains.

Because anyone who isn't at least slightly disturbed by this image should probably be locked up somewhere away from young boys.

Akron Comic Con

One this Saturday, Nov. 10th, The University of Akron will host the Akron Comic Con in the Student Union on the 3rd floor. Doors will open at 10 am and the Con goes until 6 pm. Tickets are $8 presale and $10 at the door or $5 for UA students with their ID.

If you remember how much fun I had at the Columbus, then check out this one a little closer to home. They are hosting a Comic Cover Contest and doing a Charity event for people who come in costume. You can check out the full event list and panels being offered HERE.

So go on and check it out. What else are you doing with your Saturday. I'll be there (possibly rocking a Superman outfit) so you should dress up as your favorite comic character and come on by.

Character Creation

So today we are going to talk about my little "character building" session with my friends. Before starting, we all decided what types of characters we wanted to be. After some argument of who gets to be the Rogue, we finally decided who our fantasy people will be.

Acting as our sadistic Dungeon Master (and lovingly photoshopped onto the face of the DnD cartoon character) is my friend Jordan Walsh.

Winning the battle of being our Rogue (and an elf to boot) is the lone female nerd of our group, Moira Quigley.

Dejected over not getting the Rogue spot and settling on Human Monk is 

Jordan's little brother Brennan Walsh

And rounding out our adventuring party as a Cleric Halfling (think Hobbit) is me.

Now, the major part of creating a character is dice rolling. Usually to get your stats (strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc.) you must roll 4 six-sided dice, drop the lowest and add them up to get your score. Now we, being completely unprepared as usual, had only 1 six-sided die laying around. So, in turn, we rolled our single die a total of about 75 times to get all of our stats.

I'll skip the boring details but suffice it to say that Moira ended up having an almost god-like Rogue due to lucky dice rolls, Brennan's monk was fairly average and my poor little hobbit priest was about as weak as can be. Needless to say, I was a little annoyed and Moira was a little impossible to be around for a minute.

As we went through the several hour long process of finishing off our characters I asked my friends, none of which has played the game before why they wanted to try it out.

"I honestly wasn't sure. It seemed like it could be fun," Moira said. "But now that I've made my character, I can totally see it. I feel awesome. I just want to kill things with her."

Jordan weighed in saying, "I thought it would be fun. It's like writing a story and letting your friends play along in it. I'm thinking of doing a zombie apocalypse."

Well that's all for now. Jordan is hard at work building us our first adventure so I'll be sure to update you all when that first happens.