Erik "Redhawk" Larson

Man, I use this thing once in a blue moon

redhawk — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:36:46 GMT

But Mara, I had to share this one with you.

Power/Rangers. Yes, as in Mighty Morphin'. All dirtied up and the grimdark knob turned up to eleven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw5vcUPyL90

Hey Bryant!

redhawk — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 20:49:31 GMT

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/452329082/tales-from-the-floating-vagabond-second-edition

Sounds like it'd be right up your alley.

This just in

redhawk — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 00:27:36 GMT

WE GOT THE PLACE!

Oy. Nervous and excited all at the same time.

redhawk — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 01:52:01 GMT

So, in a fit to avoid complete and total l4m3rh00d, Jai and I just put in for an apartment of our very own. In a really nice complex, about 1093 square feet in size, two bedrooms. Really would have liked the three but outside of our budget without getting a roomie, and that we weren't terribly keen on doing.

I'm very grateful to my folks for letting me move back in and put my life back together, let me bring Jai to the US and let us get our married life started together, but it's high time we get our own place, establish more our own identities.

So nervous. So excited. I want this to go through so badly and if life has taught me anything it's that I don't usually get what I want.

But this time, I think, will be different.

So GOG.com...

redhawk — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:11:09 GMT

is now bundling MacOS X .dmg file installers for a chunk of their catalog.

I could be in trouble, as I've invested a chunk in GOG's offerings. Heroes of Might and Magic, Fallouts, Wing Commanders, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale...

Man, if they're coming to MacOS I'm gonna squee. And download a lot.

Completely randomly...

redhawk — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:25:40 GMT

I am finally getting around to reading Max Berry's Jennifer Government. So far so good, but what has me grinning is that Hack Nike, our protagonist, is from St Kilda, USA (Australia).

It's that kind of book.

But it amuses me when stuff like this pops up.

Man, if I had a tech-ego, it'd have taken a shot today

redhawk — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:38:30 GMT

So. Let me spin you the scenario here.

I get home from work. iPad 3rd gen, iPhone 4. I want to upgrade both to iOS 6. I had kicked off the iPad before I left to work, but I come home to a notice that the upgrade failed because iTunes couldn’t work a backup on the iPad.

Fuck, sez I. So I disconnect it, reconnect it, and now iTunes flat-out refuses to see any device I plug into it. I try all four of my front-mount USB ports and both my cables, all combos, no joy. I bounce iTunes. I bounce my PC. Nothing.

Cue the Spouse. MongoWife comes in because I’m grumbling loud enough for her to hear. She bounces my phone, I move one of my cables to a back-mount USB port, we shut down iTunes and bring it back up, and then … sonofabitch … everything works.

Man, I do this for a living and have been for close to two decades now and I got pwned by the chem major.

Upshot is, iOS 6 on my toys!

I have a really dumb question.

redhawk — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 00:00:25 GMT

And by dumb, I mean super-dumb everyone-gets-all-up-in-my-bidness dumb.

Does anyone happen to know of a con - preferably a SF/Fantasy or comics con - that bans costuming?

Because I would pay good money to be able to go to a con, get my geek on, and be able to enjoy myself fully.

Suffice it to say I don't like cosplay. At all. I don't do Halloween, haven't since I was a child. I'll hand out candy and stuff - that's only fair - but I don't dress up and it bugs me when I see adults who are. I get weirded out at Slave Leia women, people trying to be Batman, fat men in fuku, you name it. It bothers me. I don't want to look at it, deal with it, be weirded out by it.

So - guess what it really boils down to is I was wondering if there's enough other people who feel that way to have started up a con to cater to their tastes or if I should continue to steadfastly avoid the con scene entirely and miss out on what may be going on in that little corner of fandom.

EDIT: This also applies to what are commonly called "Booth Bunnies".

Reading

redhawk — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:31:40 GMT

As work is lethally dull I've been reading a lot of books on my iPad. I've exhausted the urban fantasy genre with terrible romance-ensue covers (Mercy Thompson, et al) so now I've moved on to things people I know have read and enjoyed.

Related side note of little relevance: there is a terrible lack of ebooks of Eric Lustbader's stuff. Sad panda.

So now I'm chunking into the Lies of Lock Lamora. So far, so good.

It's the weirdest goddamned thing

redhawk — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:34:53 GMT

I'm Erik, and I have a confession to make.

I like The Old Republic's PVP setup.

Now, for a little background. Since I picked up the MMO monkey on my back I've been adamant how much I hated PVP. Every time I'd try it I'd get frustrated, discouraged, pissed-off. Avoid it like the plage, get pissed off when PVP starts fucking up the PVE game, nerdrage when holiday achievements demand that I PVP.

But now, here comes TOR. Things are _different_. No dying in a global cooldown or two. PVP that's ostensibly goals-based (although, for fuck's sake, people, try PLAYING Huttball instead of turning it into a Grand Melee in the middle of the field). Voidstar makes me cheer when it pops up. Even Alderaan, which is take-and-hold tower defense, is fun and entertaining. I PVP on my heals-based sorcerer and don't feel like I'm turned into Captain Useless Healbitch. PVPing on my DPS-spec sorc is even MORE fun.

Must be just how WoW is set up re: PVP that sucks all the fun out of things. And RIFT. And Conan. And City of Heroes.

It's so weird.

Quick update

redhawk — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:45:33 GMT

So now I'm all married and shit. Feels just like I did yesterday, just with a ring on my finger.

It's good, though.

I still have one of these. Whaddya know?

redhawk — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:20:17 GMT

So. Announcement time. Today, at roughly 1:30-ish PM Eastern time, my fiancee Jai passed the interview portion of the immigration process in Montreal. In roughly two weeks time they'll mail her her fiancee visa, and then I will be coming up there to come and get her to bring her back to Philly so we can start our lives together.

I am unbelievably excite.

A good day in WoW

redhawk — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:19:35 GMT

My baby DK hit 85, my mage hit 60 (now 61, looming onto 62), and my little baby vanity guild Aggressively Casual decided to go do A Dance With Dragons.

This means that we took out Malygos, Onyxia, Sartharion (with all drakes up), and Halion.

It was unbelievably fun.

We're going to be stepping into T11 some time in August. I am unbelievably excite.

So I just finished A Dance With Dragons

redhawk — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:24:27 GMT

And I feel the need to choke a bitch.

Fucker ended it onna cliffhanger! A CLIFFHANGER!

GAAAAAAH!

But overall, I quite liked it.

Writer's Block: Going the distance

redhawk — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:25:41 GMT

Not per se, but my fiancee is jacking her life and moving across a border to be with me. So - kinda yes?

Wasn't an easy decision, but we deliberated it like adults, looked at our options, and came to a conclusion.

Year and change later, many MANY dollars later, and if all goes well she'll be here in a few months.

I would just like to say...

redhawk — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:39:48 GMT

That my copy of A Dance With Dragons has been shipped to me.

That is all.

X-Men; First Class

redhawk — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:45:06 GMT

In Short: LOVED IT.

Go see it. I rate it as slightly above X1 and slightly below X2 in terms of quality. Then there's a girnormous air gap, then XMO: Wolverine, then in the next galaxy over, there is X3.

Loved Magneto, loved Charles, loved Raven, loved Shaw (although he's got the attitude of someone like Apocalypse), loved Emma ... it was _all good_.

Sure, there's some nitpicks, but I can overlook those.

More Summer-bait...

redhawk — Tue, 17 May 2011 07:09:52 GMT

http://store.hbo.com/img/product/resized/474/00300493-319474_500.png?k=59888e3f&pid=300493&s=catl

Because I am occasionally a bad, bad man. :)

Well. That was fun. But only not.

redhawk — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:19:12 GMT

Looks like my toons on The Scryers are now officially guildless. Pondering moving them over to Deathwing or the like, consolidate on the horde-side or something. Or find a new home on The Scryers.

Or move them to someplace that is not Deathwing and stay Alliance.

Can't say I'm really all that broken up about it, though. Been brewing for a long time and when we wipe five or so times on trash, the raid scene in Mead Hall is just dysfunctional.

So for the time being Anatoly and Taxol are back in Aggressively Casual.

I keep trying, and I keep striking out

redhawk — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:38:52 GMT

So as a result of an agreement with my friend Jo I watched the first ep of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on Netflix.

Now she has to watch S1E1 of Sons of Anarchy. BWAHAHAHAHA!

So. I've discovered that while FMA:B has some potentially intriguing bits in it, the art style, all the things that make it an anime, are the things that turn me off to the art form.

The "cost saving technique" of flipping from nicely-animated style to super-deformed crayons (well, that's what it looked like to me) and the uber-cutesy U.U faces and the cross-shaped veins in the forehead that pulse - along with an accompanying massive degradation of the art style - when people get pissed off yank me right out of the story each and every time they happen. And at least in the first episode they happen a _lot_.

Plus, apparently to star in Japanese animated pop culture you need to be under the age of sixteen. Which snaps my WSOD (Willing Suspension of Disbelief) real fuckin' quick. Does Japan have a child-soldier fetish nobody told me about? Is this a post-WWII cultural thing I'm unaware of?

It's not all bad, though. I do like that people take hits. They bleed, they swear, they fight against each other and _get hurt_. They also spend time in hospitals healing up.

These are all good things.

But I just can't get past the style tropes of the genre they've chosen to tell their story in.

For future reference...

redhawk — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:41:10 GMT

Anatoly, Holy side, working on the BiS list pre-raid:

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/the_scryers/anatoly#v1-z1-o11315~230-gB3,Co2,x5290S0M0T0L0F04N90h15L07060CGz02,,D821GCH7BF5A49E06

Win

redhawk — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:56:47 GMT

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2236-World-of-Warcraft-Patch-4.1.11-Preview

Winter is Coming

redhawk — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:42:25 GMT

In the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.

EDIT: SUMMER! HBO has House T-shirts! No Martells yet, but We Do Not Reap, Family, Duty, Honor, Winter is Coming, Hear Me Roar, Blood and Fire, As High As Honor, and Ours Is The Fury.

:)

Hey Doqz!

redhawk — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 02:14:30 GMT

Have you been exposed to the glory that is Broseph Stalin?

Why is it...

redhawk — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:23:16 GMT

that 25-and-change years later I can _STILL_ hear in my mind's ear and even sing along with the theme song to 3-2-1 Contact?

Oy. The random crap that bubbles up sometimes.