50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
One of my mottos for gaming is, "never lose the joy of playing in pursuit of winning."
So when I can't seem to figure out an answer in Draw Something, for example, I amuse myself..
HA! HA! FART GUN! IT IS A GUN THAT SHOOTS FARTS! HA!
This Friday, I'm heading to Melbourne to present Video Games Unplugged with Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub. The show is going to be amazing: the MSO will play music from games like Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain, and Final Fantasy. As the music plays, they'll show the games on a huge screen. And did I mention that it's presented by Scott, Kris, and me? Yeah, that too.
I'm also going to be at Supanova in Melbourne April 13-15, and at Supanova Gold Cost April 20-22.
I've never been to Australia before, and though I'm a little unsettled by the idea of a 16 hour flight, I'm currently about 55% excited, 45% teetering-on-an-anxiety-attack-about-the-whole-thing.
Because of the International Date Line, I leave on Friday, but I don't arrive until Sunday. Then, on the way back, I actually land in Los Angeles four hours before I take off. I'm considering wearing a bowtie and a fez for the trip.
I left my Kindle on an airplane this weekend (post-convention exhaustion will do that to you), and someone found it.
I know that someone found it, because they've been using my account to buy games and books. Based on the purchases, I'm fairly sure the person who found my Kindle (which is named Wheatley) is young, possibly a teenager or a college student. He or she likes Scrabble, Battleship, Spelling Star, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and something called Telesa. He or she also hopes to learn Samoan, French, and Spanish. He or she has spent a fair amount of my money on these things.
I used Amazon's Personal Document thing to send a note to my Kindle, thanking the person for finding it, and telling them that I can be contacted at wil@wilwheaton.net to arrange its return.
I'm hopeful that this person will do the right thing and get in touch.
*Updated*
I called Amazon, reported it stolen, and they deactivated it after refunding me the fradulent purchases.
This isn't the end of the world; I can afford a new Kindle (thank Steve the Fruitbat), and in the grand scheme of things, it isn't the biggest of deals… but I sincerely hoped that whoever has my Kindle now would have read the note I sent to it, which is titled TO THE PERSON WHO FOUND MY KINDLE, and gotten in touch to return it to me. I want to believe in the basic goodness of people.
I really hope that it wasn't just taken by some kid who decided to keep something because, you know, Finders Keepers. I really hope that it was taken by some dirtbag who turned around and sold it to a kid who is too young to know that "this Kindle comes with whatever you want and you never have to pay for it, just give me fifty bucks for meth!" or whatever is a pretty clear flag that something isn't totally honest with this thing.
Anyway, it looks like I'm not getting it back, and all someone has for their trouble is a useless piece of plastic and wires.
I had a fantastic time at Emerald City Comicon. Until I have time to get my thoughts together and share some of the more awesome things that happened, I want to share the following pictures that I took while I was there:
I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted, because my line was pretty long the whole weekend. I figured that if I was stopping to take lots of pictures, it would probably result in at least a few people not being able to make it through the line (which some people told me took three hours, in spite of my efforts to move it along as quickly as I could. Holy crap, that's a long line. I would never wait three hours to meet me. Hell, I wouldn't even wait one hour.)
I used the Vignette app on my Android (HTC Inc. CM7) to take these pictures. I think you can clicky-click them if you want to see them in all their epic huge glory.