moon over a ruined castle

Serious_turtleYou know you’ve spent a little too much time on the Internet when you’re in Maui, taking pictures of a beautiful Sea Turtle, and the first thing you think is, "Oh man, I can’t wait to LOLCat this when I get home!"

This, my friends, is how my damaged brain works.

I’m still on island time, both literally and emotionally, though I’m steadily working my way back into the whole real life thing, knocking down the towering To Do list that built up while I was gone.

It’s so hard to get motivated to sit down and work, when what I really want to do is play frisbee with Nolan, swim with Ryan, and snorkel with Anne. Since this was the first long distance family vacation we’ve taken in several years, I’m willing to grant myself a couple of days to get ease back into real life . . . of course, eating pineapple with breakfast, having a peanut butter and guava jelly sandwich while drinking Pog, and listening to Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman while I do my Propelling is making the transition a little less jarring.

A couple of quick notes before I head downtown to meet some friends for lunch (talk about a jarring return to real life!):

Some people I used to work for at PokerStars have started a new online poker site called Fleet Street Games. It’s got Mac, Windows, and Linux clients (a Linux client! How cool is that?!) and is in a free beta right now. I played in — and won — a $150 freeroll tourney last night. SHIP IT!

I called Creation this morning to find out, once and for all, if I was persona non grata or persona we’re coola, and if they were intersted in having me come to the Vegas convention or not. It turns out that my e-mails were going to people who are no longer with the company. The girl I spoke with this morning seemed very interested in bringing me out to the show, and though it would unprofessional to talk too much about the contents of our conversation, I felt that it was very positive and there’s a pretty good chance that I will end up being at the Big Honkin’ Vegas Convention this year after all. More details to come later.

I tried not to follow the news too closely while I was on vacation, but I care deeply about Bush’s domestic spying operation, and the efforts of idiots like Steny Hoyer to defy his constituents and give AT&T retroactive amnesty for breaking the law and helping Bush spy on innocent Americans without a warrant. I’m pretty disgusted with the Democratic leadership in the House for caving in to Mister 28%, but I’m positively appalled that Barack Obama has been effectively silent (other than a weak and intelligence-insulting statement) on the entire debate. I commented at DailyKos:

Wouldn’t it be awesome if a senator who had expressed non-ambiguous
opposition to the Protect AT&T act in the past joined in the
filibuster against it?

Wouldn’t it be even more awesome if the vast majority of that
senator’s base — oh hell, forget the base, let’s open it up to the
vast majority of all Americans — opposed amnesty for law-breaking
telcos and expanded spying powers for the White House, making this a
slam dunk win for that senator, giving him a chance to show some
serious leadership?

Oh! Oh! Oh! And wouldn’t it be the most awesome EVER if that senator was running
for president, and could use this issue to show Americans that he was
seriously committed to changing the way things happen in Washington?!

Yeah, that sure sounds like a perfect dream scenario, doesn’t it?

Oh well. A guy can dream. Yeah . . . a guy can dream.

I’m really, really tan. I’ve actively avoided being in the sun for the last several years, but it was pretty much impossible to do that while I was in Hawaii. I don’t think I’ve been this tanned since I was a teenager. Rawr.

People Magazine put out one of those "Where are they now?" issues about kid actors who are all grown up now. I didn’t want to participate, because I usually get ratfucked by the media in things like this, but since they were going to include me anyway, I decided that it was worth the risk to talk with them and hope for the best. The issue came out this week, and we saw it at the grocery store yesterday. I was very surprised that it was really positive and — get ready for the shocker of all shockers — accurate. They talked about how much I love being a dad, and how important Ryan and Nolan are to me. Anne showed it to Ryan, who was adorably excited to see that he was mentioned in the article.

I’m going to play the hell out of Descent this afternoon and tonight.

Yesterday, I Rickrolled 12000 people. All of them, as far as I can tell, took it in good humor. And no, Internet, Rickrolling will NEVER get old.

Twitter is riding the failwhale to failtown. I love Twitter, and watching it die a slow death is breaking my heart. Now that replies and tracking are down, what’s the point?

You know what would be awesome? A real life Rickroll: you go to a concert, expecting to see a particular band, but when the lights come down, holy shit there’s Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up on stage FOR REAL. Just the one song, then the band you were there to see comes out.

I have to go to the dentist tomorrow.

I’ve run out of interesting things to say.

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74 thoughts on “moon over a ruined castle”

  1. Hey Wil, welcome back!
    Thumbs up for a Linux-cliented poker-thingy!
    Awesome pics. It makes me want to go there sometime. I see that now that they’re almost both out of the house and on to real life, the ban on photos of N & R is being lifted. Very tastefully, I might add. Thanks for trusting us.
    The 16×9 Indian Head test pattern broke the needle on my geek-o-meter. I was totally jazzed. Thanks.
    Great that you go through to creation! I hate it when that happens, when you’re e-mailing people that aren’t there. But nowadays, most sendmails are probably configured to not send rejects to avoid backscatter spam. Goddamn spammers. You were doing the right thing and trying not be be a jerkwad; I’m glad that it worked out though.
    Go easy on getting back to real life! You wouldn’t want to sprain something.
    Wil’s back, and he brought the keg! 🙂

  2. Raise your hand if you got RickRoll’d. *me*
    Loved it. I was hoping for someone to create a Family Guy RickRoll from the episode where Brian sings Astley.
    I agree on the Twitter thing…they need to up their bandwidth, figure out their database issues, or pack it in…I like Twitter a lot, but it’s dying slowly on the vine.

  6. Twitter does seem to be on the downward slide, doesn’t it?
    Go, Team Internet (www.goteaminternet.com) looks like it could be interesting but its a little too fancy for me, I think…

  7. elysia1: Don’t count on Plurk. A Twitter message from Tateru Nino informed me that they’re experiencing “issues” as well.
    Glad you have so much awesome going on, Wil. And love the LOLturtle.

  8. Yeah, just after I emailed you about RickRolling the entire restaurant I work in, the Chef came back and asked “What the hell was that?”
    I just said, “You got RickRolled.”
    He stared for a minute, then walked out of the office.

  12. Glad you’re back, Wil. Did the Twittered Python links for Nolan help? (I have no idea anymore if Twitter is just randomly eating my replies to friends, or what.)
    I’m renewing my EFF membership. It’s not an epic fail yet, Obama, but ooh, you’re skating close.
    The live RickRolling would rock.

  15. Welcome back Wil – your right getting back to business after having fun in the sun is always the worst!

  17. Dude, if I had a band, I would so live RickRoll people. Holy crap.
    I feel the same way about Twitter. It’s amazing that a tool that has such a following just can’t get itself together.

  18. Wil, any chance you can ‘chat with your friends’? I jumped on the chance to try out the new poker site. (Not being a fan of PokerStars Mac Client) …
    And it prompted told me that because of the state that I live in (Maryland), that I’m not allowed to play in any games that use ‘fake money nor real money’.
    Basically I can’t play except in freeplay, where it costs nothing, and you win nothing.

  19. Sounds like you had a good time with the family. I wish you the best in your dealings with Creation. Again, welcome back – its hard to leave a place like Maui, but its also good to come back home.

  20. Glad to have you back, Wil–but even gladder that you had a great vacation.
    You haven’t mentioned your sinuses lately. Still doing much better, we hope? No trouble on the long flight to Hawaii?

  21. SeriousTurtle: Wil you kids turn down that muzak? I iz not amuzed! Damn kids! All your cheezeburgers are belong me!

  23. Hi Wil,
    Great turtle pic!
    Also thanks for the Headsup on FleetStreet games. I’m going to give it a try this weekend.
    Oh yah re: twitter. I read an interesting blog on datawocky:
    comparing twitter to india’s gupshup. The author seemed to think as you do that twitter’s design is fatally flawed.
    Personally, I’m not sure why more people don’t use a postgresql db model. Postgresql is more robust, scalable and stable.
    Welcome back, with you being gone for a week I had to rely soley on Pauly for entertainment and Vegas is making him mean!

  25. As a matter of fact, just that morning, I commented to my daughter that I hadn’t been rickrolled in months.
    When she heard Rick, she nearly peed her pants laughing at me.
    Maui is awesome. Hubby and I honeymooned there and on Molokai’i. The only reason we came back was that I didn’t think my ancient dog would make it through the quarantine procedures if we had her shipped to us.
    Then the damn dog lived another 8 years.

  26. I’m still on island time
    Which, IIRC, is approximately 30 minutes behind real time if you’re a small projectile coming from a nearby boat. Perhaps a day or so ahead if you’re a throat-slit creepy doctor floating by ocean.

  27. I’m still on island time
    Which, IIRC, is approximately 30 minutes behind real time if you’re a small projectile coming from a nearby boat. Perhaps a day or so ahead if you’re a throat-slit creepy doctor floating by ocean.

  29. I would be happy if the people object to AT&T getting off the hook would vote with their money and get a Qwest account, Qwest being the telecommunications company that broke the news and refused to comply without warrants.
    We should avoid AT&T at all costs. It should be forced to divest and break up again. IMO.

  30. Okay, I was not paying any attention to the TV last night, when all of a sudden I realize that Wil briefly popped on t he creen and used the phrase “stupid attention whore”. VH1, blah blah David Blaine, who cares what it was about. It was perfect. My repeating it today during a staff meeting was not as awesome, but very very effective.

  31. *snerk* Re: The Rickrolling. You bastard 😀 I’d only just Followed your twitter, for that matter.
    Speaking of which, some live-action Rick Rolling which may appeal to you occoured during this event:
    http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html
    Not as bad as the “deathboy” thing sounds. Actually, the other thing from bad.

  34. Serious Turtle wins!
    And on the subject of a real-life RickRoll: When my little sister called me this afternoon, I was still steamed at her for something she had said to me last night. I answered my cell, put it on speaker, and when she said “Hello,” the first thing she heard was 7 unruly college students singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” She hung up and hasn’t called me back. I’m such a terrible big sister.

  35. Ok… I’ve been lurking for a while & I’m going to go ahead and dork out for a minute. I’ve recently gotten back in touch with my inner Sci-Fi geek and have been watching old ST:TNG episodes. You were so adorable! I have to say I had a pretty bad crush on Wesley when I was 14. But now I’m so thrilled to see that you’re all grown up, happily married with kids, and about as normal as anyone who’s worked in Hollywood could hope to be.
    Buht srsly – ur lolgrammur kneeds wrk. =P
    Have a great day!

  36. Wil,
    I’m so glad you had a relaxing vacation. I just wanted to say that we have been watching “I Love The New Millenium” and we cacked up when you made the comment about LOTR making up for the travesty that is SW1-3. You are so right!!! We love seeing you on the show.

  40. I agree with you on the FISA fiasco. I figured Obama would come in contact with hard politics sooner or later, but your right, that statement was just goddamn insulting. My confidence is definitely shaken and I hate the fact that we have no viable alternatives. Although, I’m half-tempted to vote for Nader. It’s a ways to November, so hopefully our hero can dust off and get back to kicking ass.

  41. For those of you who can’t play on FleetStreetGames – sorry about that. It’s your state legislature that sucks, not us. 🙂
    I would say something about Wil’s win being further proof that online poker is rigged, but it would be bad for business.
    …dan (CEO of Fleet Street Games)

  43. Please pass the Poi!
    dude…politicians suck. I prefer to think of myself as an independent thinker, and I was thinking about having a nice porter. I actually brewed 5 gallons….yeah!
    How’s the gardening? You know, when I lived in Fresno, ya Fresno, lol where I attended the illustrious acting school with Doug Jones mother at (drum roll) John Powers…anyway, I used to be able to get two harvests a year, but since I moved to Michigan…let’s put it this way, my garden sucks ass. If it’s not the weather, then it’s the rabbits, or the ground hogs, or the skunks, raccoon, deer, you name it.
    Well, glad you guys had a good time down there! 🙂 Anyway, it’s already been a year since you and Takei did the KvP thing at fanlib, any chance of putting together another writing contest/challenge sort of thing?
    You know, its a really cool time to be a kid, mine are into Tokko, Death Note, Blood Plus, Ruroni Kenshin, Bleach, and Inuyasha; and not just into it, but they draw the stuff pretty good…I’m like, ever heard of Voltron? lol nope…
    So, I decided to make them my little anime and manga consultants so I can transform my Finnish story/myth sort of thing into a short anime film…it helps to know maya, which I do…lots of work to do, I’m hoping to have a short trailer finished by the end of summer…
    🙂

  44. Hey Dan @ Fleet Street Games. Thanks for posting here. I have no problem directing my anger at my state legislature. I’m just confused why every other Poker website (including the aforementioned PokerStars) has no problem with letting me play with either play or real money.
    But why Fleet Street, claims I can’t even play with play-money, let alone real.
    *shrug*

  45. I know I’m out of touch when it comes to this sort of thing, but I’d never heard the term “rick roll’d” until reading this post.
    To that end…

    Muppets Rock…and RickRoll.

  46. Yeah, I was massively disappointed in Obama backing the act, which isn’t specifically AT &T its actually most if not all of the Telecom companies. Good bye civil liberties.

  47. Yeah, I clicked on the link. Passing up a rickroll is like declining on a free serving of your favourite food: how can you pass it up?
    Rarely.

  49. I have to admit a RL Rickroll would be HILLARIOUS!!! Genius good sir…pure genius.
    Glad to hear you had such a great vacation. 🙂

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