Stalking PAX Prime

Last night, I was all settled in for a lovely semi-marathon of BBC's London Hospital. Little Guy was down for the count. The house was reasonably clean. And Mr. Dude was out with friends to watch the new Captain America movie.

[As an aside, I was supposed to go to that movie, too, but we couldn't get a babysitter in time. So I couldn't watch the latest iteration in a never-ending parade of superhero/comic book-based movies. Oh darn.]

And then I get this text message:

Grammatical errors aside [because I'm one of those annoying people who try to make sure even my text messages have proper capitalization, punctuation, etc.], this pretty much sums up my weekend. 

Stalking PAX Prime tickets. 

Mr. Dude [who really is listed in my phone as "Yours Truly" ... and who chose a ridiculous profile picture based on a meme] knows that historically, PAX Prime tickets are announced very soon after PAX East in Boston has concluded. 

So the man who has a Twitter handle and never uses it turned on notifications for @Official_Pax a week ago to be sure he could rush to a computer at a moment's notice to get one of the coveted 4 Day Passes. Since PAX East was this weekend, there's been a tweet every. freakin'. 30. seconds.  

That's a lot of notifications on his phone, people. 

And a lot of times for my heart to start racing, waiting to hear him yell out, "To the interwebs!" 

And a lot of times of not knowing when I'm going to have to drop everything [except for maybe the 1 year old Little Guy ... I love my husband, but I draw the line there] to run to my computer and basically live out this scene: 

Key Difference that Mr. Dude would like you to note: They're trying to get into Comicon in San Diego. Not PAX. 

I actually offered [!!!] to go to Emerald City Comicon last month and he refused. 

Why?

"That's for a bunch of nerds, Stephanie."

Riiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhttttt ... 

[Updated: Apparently I should use the interwebs for some of my proofreading. You know, so that I can discover that it's spelled "Comicon" instead of "ComiCon" ... like I tried to do the first time around.] 

Halo: Taking Over the World

[One cell phone and Atari console at a time ...]

In this week's [or maybe just today's?] edition of "news Stephanie notices now only because she's married to a geek", I saw an article from TechCrunch about Microsoft's answer to Siri.

I know we all want some sort of personal assistant who knows what we need, when we need it, and can get it for us. Heck, if I had someone who could bring me coffee and do my paperwork and clean my house while I just played with Little Guy all day, that would be fantastic. And I know how hard it is to find a good assistant - I've actually worked as an admin assistant on several occasions, once for an executive director. [Do you know how hard it is to stay one step ahead of a boss who we all joked had more energy than the Energizer Bunny?!]

For some of us unfortunate souls, the closest we get to having a personal assistant is being good friends with apps like Remember the Milk, Evernote and Google Calender. [God bless those developers!]

Apparently, there are some people want a pseudo-friend who will organize their lives and talk to them, too, even if it's their OS wearing those shoes [wasn't there a movie nominated for an Oscar this year about that?].

Video gamers, say goodbye to Siri. Your new best friend [as long as you like Windows Mobile] is now Cortona.

Oh wait, she already was, wasn't she? For all those years you played Halo? [Or still play Halo?] 

Yeah, she's that creepy AI that helps you with the crazy amount of information you have to store whilst you're beating the bad guys.

Um, methinks I already have enough video games in my life without having my phone talk to me like a character from a giant gaming franchise that I'm pretty sure Mr. Dude could play through while blindfolded.

Thanks anyways, Microsoft. I'm sure it's the thought that counts.

In last week's edition of "news the family only pays attention to because they have a geek for a son", Mr. Dude's dad dropped off a photocopied article from the Smithsonian magazine. [Yes, he can be old-school like that. Photocopiers do still exist, people!]

The Scrabble rule in Mr. Dude's family is that if you can use it in a sentence, it's a legit word.

So now, thanks to someone who wanted to "demake" Halo by cramming it all into just 4KB of memory on an Atari 2600, I have a new word to use and hopefully score triple word points on. If only I could get Mr. Dude to play a game of Scrabble without taking 10 minutes for each turn ...

There. Now don't you feel so much more informed about the important events of the day?