LockerGnome

I am happy to report that I have been approved to keep a blog in the LockerGnome blog network. You can head over to my LockerGnome blog right now and check out my first post there as an official regular. I have had a few guest posts published on the network in the past, but I'm all legit and stuff now. Woo!

I may not be able to submit a post every day like some there do, but I plan to post there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Bookmark it and stay tuned.

I Just Wanted To Favorite A Video

The other day, I went to favorite a YouTube video. Gods willing, this should be a simple task. However, this was not the case this time. At first, there was a very minor annoyance. I wasn't logged in. This makes sense since I have multiple YouTube accounts/channels. I entered in my personal account details, since I wanted to favorite the video in my personal account. Simple enough. Right?

Not so. Instead of being redirected back to the video, I was greeted by a splash screen telling me that I had to link my YouTube account to a Google account due to security reasons. I've been greeted with a similar splash screen before, but this time it was MANDATORY in order for me to use my account again. I had previously opted out of linking the account to a Google account but apparently I could no longer do so.

Why? Security? How is Google accounts more secure than old YouTube accounts? They do not make this apparent. It just seems like they want all YouTube users to also be Google users. The number of new users that they garner from the YouTube brand will surely look good on PowerPoint slides in keynotes. Now, I'm no Google hater. I'm using one of their services to write this post. I do love Gmail. However, it just seems lately like they are integrating all of their acquired brands in order to compete with Facebook. YouTube could definitely do that for them. Maybe there will be a Google movie called "The Search Engine" in the near future.

In any event, I could not use my YouTube account until I created a new Google account. I knew that my other YouTube account was linked to my main Google account (that I use for Gmail) so I could not link it to that. However, I tried just to make sure that they were going to make this process ridiculous for me. Of course, I couldn't do it, so I clicked the link to make a new YouTube account and based it on my Yahoo mail account. The fun, however, did not stop there. I now had to verify my new Google account in order to be able to use YouTube features such as being able to upload videos, but the confirmation email I requested never showed up in my inbox. It was not showing up in my spam folder, either. I tried different ways to receive it, to no avail. It was not in my Yahoo mail and I had no Gmail account set up for the new Google account I had just created. After much frustration, I gave up and went to bed.

The next day, I tried to send and receive the confirmation email again. In hindsight, the confirmation email may have been trying to go to my new Google account instead of the Yahoo account linked to it, but I still had not set up Gmail in the new Google account. Was this transition really set up this clumsily by Google? I was about ready to give up and start a new YouTube account and channel when I decided to create ANOTHER new Google account from scratch. This account was not linked to any other service on the web/cloud.

I connected this new account with my personal YouTube account without much trouble since I had already dug deep in to my personal preferences when trying to get everything to work earlier. The average Joe would have probably been lost. YouTube/Google does inform you that you can change the preferences after you change them, but the average user is never going to remember that or where that option is.

I would not be ranting now if this process was not handled so poorly by Google. Again, I am not a Google hater, but a smooth transition in cases like these are the key to user satisfaction, especially since most of the web are the Facebook crowed who don't know an https from a .com. If I had this much trouble with this, just think about what Aunt Therma would go through.

I wish I could remember which video I was trying to favorite.

I Haz A Pet

It's been a little over two years but I finally have a pet again. As you can see, it's a hermit crab. The fact that the apartment complex I've been living in charges people for pets and the fact that I'm on a shoe string budget has kept me from owning a cat again but this little guy is super cheap to feed, easy to take care of, and hermit crabs don't mess up carpets. With the amount of work I do, owning a cat would be more of a nuisance than anything anyway since they demand constant attention. This little guy doesn't demand anything but privacy. I am trying to get him used to the idea of being handled, though. So far he just jumps in his shell whenever he so much as sees anyone. It makes it hard to get a picture of him, if it's a him. I don't really know the gender, but I started picking out guy names and myself and my girlfriend settled on the name Merlin. Maybe I should have gone with Gandalf, though. The next shell he's likely to transfer to is white.

Almost Died

Me and my girlfriend were at a pet store yesterday when this giant turtle came around the corner and started heading straight towards us. Fortunately, I was able to walk out of the way in time.

Ohayocon 2011

Before Ohayocon this year I had no idea that I would be going all three days. I thought that I would save money by only going one or two days because money had been tight. I only thought that, at most, I would be going the first and last day. However, that would mean that I would miss the third day, which is the longest day at the convention with the most things going on. At the very last moment, I cracked and bought a full 3 day pass. I figured that I had nothing else going on that weekend, and I would regret just sitting around the apartment for a day or two while a whole bunch of awesome was going on. I literally made the decision in the registration room.

I'm glad I did even though I spent the second day completely alone due to scheduling issues with the girlfriend and not being able to find anyone I knew before they passed out from lack of sleep. However, the girlfriend was with me the first and third day. She ran in to a whole bunch of people she knew. However, I probably would have to if I actually grew up in Ohio. I've only lived here for two years. By the way, this Chocobo was so freaking cute! I think I made him or her bashful or incredibly uncomfortable. Either way, awww!



One of our first stops was of course the dealer's room. This year, the dealer's room/artist's alley was in a brand new room. I looked for Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex merchandise, but it seemed few and far between. I finally decided on a GITS:SAC key chain, though.



The Ohayocon dance was moved to the old dealer's room location and the main event stage was moved to another new room. All three rooms were located on the third floor and the rest of the convention was closely compacted near the general vicinity of these rooms. This eliminated the need to walk or ride the trolley to the other side of the convention like last year. The convention felt smaller as a result, but in reality there were more people than ever and a decent amount of room to hold those people. I think it worked out for the better.



The major theme this year was steampunk, and there were many steampunk centric events. One of those events featured the below steampunk DJ rig. I later found out that this particular rig was featured in a Boing Boing article just a few months earlier. As you can see, it has since undergone some changes and upgrades.



I also spotted this awesome steampunk guitar at the same event.



However, the show stealer was this steampunk music box which one first place in the masquerade.



As I mentioned earlier, I spent the second day all by myself. While this did make the con less enjoyable, I made the best of the situation and enjoyed some panels and snapped pics in between. I couldn't help but feel like I was being followed, though. This bush gave me some weird vibes.



The convention was then raided by a Nerf Dalek. Security tried to handle the situation, but they were no match for even a single Nurf Dalek.



A creeper tried to take the Nurf Dalek out, to no avail.



Finally, order was maintained. The Dalek saw that it was no match for the darkness that lurks in the human mind.



The highlight of the third day was definitely Rikki Simons' panel. He is, of course, the voice of Gir on Invader Zim. The poor guy was sick so he could not do voices very well and was coughing at everybody, but he was still hilarious. My girlfriend got him to answer one of her questions.



A few days after the con, I myself became sick. The con itself kept me away from important things that I didn't realize that I was needed for and I got sick immediately after the day I took off to recover. I was going to use that time to be productive and catch up on everything but I was so bad off that I even had to call off sick from work. I have been working my butt off ever since so please excuse the late report.

However, I had a ton of fun this year, especially since I could actually see panelists with my new glasses. Last year, many panelists and especially Jonathan Coulton (during his concert) were fuzzy and featureless. It was the first time I started to contemplate whether I needed glasses or not. After almost a year of contemplating this, I finally decided that it wasn't particularly safe for me to drive without some form of optical correction.

This was my third year at Ohayocon. The other two years, I spent a considerable amount of time taking pictures and shooting video. This year, I decided to just enjoy the con more. However, I still took guite a bit of pics. You can view the rest in my Ohaycon 2011 Flickr set. I also edited together some of the video clips that I filmed and made the below video.



I am definitely going again next year. Space is just my thing and next year's theme will be space. I hope there's some Outlaw Star discussion.

You Can Boo

Sounds Like Someone Fast Forwarding A Tape

This is something that you can only learn about in a pet store (or a crazy person's house). If you put a bunch of cheeping birds together, it sounds like someone is fast forwarding a tape.