Air conditioning fixed! Yah. So here's the deal wtih that - it wasn't the air conditioner. Apparently one of the wires leading to the circuit breakers was loose, which caused a great deal of heat. This in turn resulted, not in the circuit breaker tripping, but kinda melting and failing. This could have been very bad, resulting in a fire. I feel very fortunate that we found this and fixed it before something more major than having no cool air happened.

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In other news, Jen and I are going out into the desert tomorrow. We're going to have lunch out at the A&W Restaurant. Then we're off to the outlet stores in Cabazon to see what kind of trouble we can get into. From there, we go to Morongo Casino Resort & Spa for some goofing off and some food. All of this is because we are seeing Terry Fator there.

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Not sure it's remarkable, but I am afraid of the left most lane on a flyover bridge when driving.

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So Comic-Con is this weekend, and there have already been a few interesting things that have come out. I mentioned "Flash: Rebirth" earlier. I also mentioned the new Boom! comics. Image made their announcement regarding Image United. I haven't really heard anything of note on Marvel yet. Oh, and there will be more Dr. Horrible. But, honestly, tomorrow is the BIG day. And I won't be around to know anything that's going on. Maybe I should add NewsaramaBlog to my Twitter following so I can read from the phone. Looks like they aren't really reporting things though, so maybe not.

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Sirius and XM have merger approval. Wonder when I will be able to use my XM subscription to get my music via Sonos, which currently allows Sirius radio.

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No one reading this will care, but I need to find out how to get my signature on the petition to recall Bill Postmus, who is currently the Assessor for the County of San Bernardino.

I dropped Amazing Spider-Man after this fiasco known as One More Day. I've frankly been wanting to drop Spidey for some time, but it was the one book my wife liked because it still had humour in it. Of course, knowing this I got Invincible, Hero Squared, and a few other books. She still wouldn't let me drop Spidey, even after Sins Past, The Other, and the Civil War tie-ins. Mind you, this was the only Marvel Universe book we were buying at the time.

Then came One More Day... spread out over MONTHS. And then, specifically, ASM 545. I finally convinced her that this was bogus and should be dropped. She agreed. We won't be sticking around for Brand New Day.

On Newsarama, someone asked Erik Larsen if there were any Image titles they should chek out, since they had a bit of change, having dropped ASM. Let me answer that question here - BUY INVINCIBLE. You will be so much happier with this purchase.

I have been testing a few comic collector softwares, mainly to inventory my collection but also to possibly sell some things I no longer feel the need to keep. Fine. There are three bigs in this field from what I can tell -- the new Comic Collector Live, Collectorz Comic Collector, and ComicBase. So I've been playing with the evaluation versions.

Last night, I had ComicBase installed and decided it wasn't for me. I went through their uninstall and everything turned wonky on my machine. Seems ComicBase, upon uninstall, takes out *any* font it thinks it installed, whether the font was there already or not. So it ripped out Tahoma, which is the font Microsoft predominately uses in Windows XP for the system. Many other applications also rely on this system font, and this stupid stupid comic collecting database program went and unistalled it without a care in the world.

Thankfully, either XP or Office detected that the font was missing and reinstalled it on my system in a manner of minutes. But HELLO! This is version 11 of the software. While I realize that this started on Macs, you've been doing Windows versions for some time now. Don't you think you ought to figure out how a Microsoft Installer package works?

ComicBase -- off the list.

I just entered all of the comics that I have purchased into Comic Collector Live. I have 554 comics (plus a few not listed...) with a total cover price of $1,606.01.

...and that doesn't include the trade paperbacks.

EDIT: Uh-oh. Just remembered about the two longboxes I bought off eBay of Flash (mostly Wally West though a few Barry Allen), Wonder Woman (vol 2), and JLI/JLE/JLA.

EDIT #2: Well, that bumped it to 804 books with a cover price of $1,956.51.

This is the cover to Justice Society of America #7, coming out on July 4.
( I got a package for you! (71k picture SFW) )

Make sure you close the door behind you.

Oh, and before I go, I want to tell you that Carol Burnett is suing Family Guy.

Once again, the popular press is spoiling a storyline in Marvel comics on the day the book comes out. I'm going to mention the incident months ago here, so look away if you don't know. The press spoiled the fact that Peter Parker unmasked himself on the day that book came out. It was truly front page on all the major news sites. There is equal front page news about an event that came out in a comic today.

Now, let me not put all the blame on the press. I'm sure back behind the curtain somewhere is the Marvel PR department handing the comic and/or information to their news person to get the story out there, so that everyone witll talk about it. And it's working.

Or is it? Did people go into the comic shops to see why Peter Parker unmasked? Will people go in to see why what happened today happened? Or will they go in to try and buy on issue with the hopes that it will be worth money? I think it's more the later than the former. As such, Marvel will get the nice one time bump, but I don't think it's bringing in new readers. As soon as people find out that this is all tied into Civil War and that is dragging on for how many issues with side issues, and storylines crossing... well, people will have their eyes rolled up in their head and walk out the store.

DC is not without blame here either. But the incident today is all Marvel, and they get my attention. They will NOT, however, get my money.

Jerry "The King" Lawlwer to draw Superman

I'm going to be scratching my head over that one for a bit I think.

When fandoms of rialtus collide: From Blog@Newsarama, Stan Lee on To Tell the Truth.

And from the blogs, "This isn't going to last long". jiggery_pokery should appreciate that... EDIT And indeed, the number is now 227,000 just a few hours later.

Oh, and I think LJ did something funky and logged everyone me out. If you haven't been seeing the normal number of postings, you may have been affected too.

In case you are watching the show and don't know...

NBC has an online comic that does along with each week's episodes. This is not for the dialup users out there. And now, NBC has added "Hiro's Blog", which is syndicated on LJ as heroes_hiro.

Monty Hall ... of the U. S. Marines?

Obviously, I know this is a coincidence of names, but I thought I'd share anyway.

Stephen Wacker, editor of DC's 52, has left to join Marvel

*check calendar* Nope, it's not April 1...

This icon was too funny not to share... As seen in im_a_pistol's journal, credited to opiumgaze.


The LA Times sent out an insert with the Sunday paper stating they would be discontinuing their TV Times as part of the Sunday paper, unless you opted in for free. Presumably, the LA Times did some sort of focus group or survey, and found out that most people don't use this paper guide anymore, and the cost of giving it to everyone versus only to those subscribers that want it pushed the decision to drop this by default. My pessimistic nature says that it will be free for now. But it shows how the tide it turning. Gone are the days when you had to have a TV Guide or local paper guide in order to know when anything was on. Enter the days of on-screen guides, PVRs, and Internet based listings.

Ironically, this leads me to a point -- I forgot that "The Amazing Race" was on last night, but thankfully, TiVo has it waiting for me. Oh, and for nyone who likes "Psych", it's been renewed for a second season. And George Duran of "Ham on the Street" made a funny in his blog, as syndicated here on LJ. Sure wish Alton Brown still kept a blog.

Not sure if anyone needs an external USB 2.0 hard drive or not, but here's a fairly good deal for a 160GB -- $57.95 shipped after rebate. Oh, and amazon.com has a sale on Harmony remote controls right now. Go. Get one now. Go on. I'll wait.

The Santa Ana winds have picked up over the weekend, resulting in me being down for the count on Sunday with an allergy/sinus headache. Took one of my "good" pills this morning, and that seemed to help. I can't take these at night because they make me jittery and therefore I can't sleep. Of course, I already couldn't sleep last night because of said headache, so I'm in a world of hurt today.

I did pick up The Death of Superman, World Without Superman, and The Return of Superman this weekend. Never read any of these stories, and thought I should finally get to them. I also picked up Dan Meltzer's The Millionaires and The Zero Game in hardcover for $3.33 each. Wasn't so fortunate on the pricing for Shadow of the Giant, which I am SO looking forward to reading.

Uhm, yeah. I suppose I should get lunch, since it's now 1 pm.

EDIT: Had I just waited for one more song to go through on the XM Radio, I would have said I was listening to Baha Men - Who Let the Dogs Out? *snerk*

...and if you haven't read Infinite Crisis or known what happened, well, tough. No cut tag for you!

Okay wait a second. So E2 Superman, E2 Lois, E3 Alex Luthor, and Superboy Prime were in this pocket for 20 years, or some undetermined number of years in DC time. And the whole time, they never changed clothing. I mean, we didnt see a washing machine or anything, and we have to assume there were things like refrigerators and toilets and washing machiines and all, but c'mon! E2 Supes had to have put on a few pounds in that 20 years, and Superboy Prime surely would have grown a bit having been a teen when trapped in this bubble. Ya know what I'm saying?


Now, moving on to the LA transit side of the story, I have this from Kent Shocknek's blog

Southern California is determined to end decades of being a punchline in other cities, where mass-transit is more established. Let's check the progress....

This week, the MTA has been debating what colors to call various rail lines... again. (Last time, everybody got angry.)

The Expo Line doesn't have a color: it's the Expo Line, remember? -- Some people want aqua. Not everybody. It's a real broohaha. Just one thing. There IS no Expo Line. It doesn't exist. It's L.A.'s invisible train line. Seems curious, to fight over what to call it.

The Red Line does exist. For some reason, there are two of them. They want to rename one, Purple.

Board member Bernie Parks doesn't like red, because of gang connotations... or maybe communists. Black and brown are out, to avoid race issues. Green's safe: no martians.

If all this confuses you, don't worry. Down the track: the MTA may switch from colors to numbers and letters, anyway.

So time is running out for those other cities to joke. At best, they have only 10 --or 30-- years left.

First from renaissancegeek
( Cut! )

And from creativedv8tion
( Cut 2! )

DC Comics Super Heroes commemorative stamps will be released July 20, 2006.

Don't fret, Marvel fans. Next year, there will be Marvel stamps too.

So the cat's out of the bag on Civil War #2. Anyone who read Amazing Spider-Man #532 alerady suspected what was going to happen. So what's the big deal? Why weren't people in an uproar a month ago about this? Why weren't people a month ago saying "The Spider-Man I knew is dead."? (Note: That's not a spoiler. Spider-Man does not die.) I just don't get it...

52, however, had a verrry interesting week. I'm surprised I haven't seem something from bitter_crimson yet. I'm sure we'll all know when she reads the issue.