In the Shadow of Ayacon...

About two weekends ago from the time I started writing this entry, I went to my first Kitacon, a relatively small convention that has been running for some time in the spring of every year for a while, from what I could gather. Although it was nice to be away on a holiday for once, I will have to admit something right here, right now, while everyone else lavishes praise on Kitacon 2014.

Meh.

Literally that is all I have to say on the convention.

OK I will elaborate. It was fun but not spectacular. As much as I enjoy being at these sorts of events, this Kitacon turned out to be a bit of a damp squib for me. There are various reasons for this. Some directly related to the convention. Some not. Some personal. I will go into a long and possibly rambling posting here on some of those reasons.

Laughter through (Web Video) Cruelty

About a month ago, I started watching videos of people from various places around the world traumatising themselves via a horror video game called "Amnesia", developed by Frictional Games. It is a, now possibly infamous title that revolves around some poor sod stumbling around various rooms and corridors of a castle trying to avoid getting torn to shreds by monsters and his own nerves. The amusement for me comes from these people panicking over said monsters when they are being chased by them (And occasionally by their own friends trying to trick them into thinking a monster is chasing them). That and the fact that when faced with something extremely scary in said video game, even the toughest of males is reduced to screaming and blubbing like a 10 year old girl...

Possible Employment Crisis

OK. I admit that the next few weeks will be pretty testing for my job as I heard on the news that a client of the company may be in some trouble. This may result in less work for us. Which is worrying me a little, as I already a little short on work. I'm hoping that the situation resolves itself soon, otherwise I may be looking for a new job soon...

You Know You've Entered a Timewarp When...

For strange reasons possibly related to a previous job, I have a version of VMWare Player installed on this PC. There is no real point to it at the moment. Previously, when I was working in Technical Support for a large Mobile Network Operator, there may have been some point. But now, since I no longer work there, it is more of a plaything. Something to allow me to mess around with other OS's, some older, some newer. I still have, for unfathomable reasons, a Windows 2000 installation disc from my university days. As a result, a basic Win2K virtual machine resides inside my PC. There is no real point to it. I just thought it would be funny to run an older OS. I suspect, as I have aforementioned, it would've had some use for me to research older machines in case some customer called up and mentioned they were still running Win2K. But now it is mostly irrelevant.

Faith of the Transient Worker...

So far, I've said little about my current job, other than to moan frequently on the lack of shifts being provided. The reason for this is due to the nature of the work. My current employer is a, shall we say, moderately sized company that specialises in various security related areas. And frankly, I'm not sure how much of what I do is allowed to be revealed in public given my employers have issued guidelines on the use of social networking sites and blogs. So to cover myself legally, if I need to refer to specific moments at work, I will fictionalise a lot of it to prevent getting into trouble. Or avoid it as much as possible...

Spam Attack?

For a while, a certain website I go to has had problems with a recent wave of spam attacks (I won't mention the name in case it gets more of them because of this). Recently I've noticed a large group of views from some mass marketing sites for some reason, leading me to be concerned. Any one got any ideas on how to limit their access to this blog?

Of Racism, Freedom of Speech and Top Gear hosts...

Earlier this evening, at the time of writing this entry, a relative fell ill. I will not mention this relatives identity for privacy reasons but suffice to say, s/he was feeling rather poorly and we had to help him/her to the doctors out of hours clinic.

After some waiting, the doctor came out and was immediately concerned about both the condition of the family member and whether or not we could communicate with her, asking "Do any of you speak English?" which was understandable given we all looked like foreigners. Although the situation was pretty serious with said relative unable to walk over to the doctors office easily, I ended up replying, albeit humourously, "Well, I certainly hope so! We have been living in the area for several years!"

To be fair, the poor doctor was rather embarrassed at that faux pas...

The Yellow Light of Death and B-Spec Grinding

Recently, I've gotten back into playing Gran Turismo 5. Previously I ended up getting bored of it due to the fact that there wasn't much to do, compared with other versions of the game and that in-game money was a pain to get by due to the lowered prize totals in many of the races. I still recall having to play through the race on the Indianapolis Oval in the "American Championship" event repeatedly when they temporarily doubled all prize funds last year. Or was it the year before last? (Can't remember...it was that boring...)