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Redeemed a couple more free iTunes songs, "Miss Chatelaine" by k.d. lang (a song which I've always somewhat irrationally liked, despite the singer's oddball animal-rights-anti-cattle-industry stance which forced her to vanish from the country music scene) and Art Garfunkel's cover of "That's All I've Got to Say" (which, if I'd been able to listen to the whole thing before buying, I probably wouldn't have bought, but oh well, all it cost me was a Pepsi cap). I've done a lot more browsing and sampling, and in the process have been able to quantify another "problem" I have with the iTunes store. See, there are a lot of albums of 11 or more songs where the songs are 99 cents each, but the album itself is just $9.99. The problem is that there are some songs I might like to get by themselves...but I can buy the whole album at a substantial discount over individual price...and I may not want the whole album right now but maybe I would later...so I don't buy the song. It's awfully hard to justify buying one track from a 20-song album for 99 cents (or even a free substitute for 99 cents) when I could get all 20 songs for $9.99...even if I don't necessarily want all 20 songs. Or maybe I'm just crazy.
I've recently been reminded that this is the weekend of VisionCon, the local fandom convention. I used to go regularly, but lately I've been less than enthusiastic about it (see last year's rant on the subject for reasons). I tried to get in touch with the guy who ran the anime room last year to see if he was running it again this year to volunteer to help out, but he never replied and I never bothered to try again. I don't know, maybe I'll get a Saturday-only-pass to browse the dealer room and see if I can locate Joe Moore (to whom I still need to give his Christmas present) and an old friend from school (and the only local Shadowfist player I know of) by the name of Kris Brown (who I want to alert to the online Shadowfist system, about which I still need to rant one of these days).
Honestly, most of the things that used to get me down to that 'con are now better satisfied by other means. I don't have to go there to see new anime anymore thanks to the online fansub community; I can get most anything I could have gotten in the dealer room from Amazon or other online sources; the guests are mostly actors from SF shows that aren't aired anymore or local authors I've barely heard of; and as for gaming, well, the con's never been the best place to go to game, because everyone's doing it at once and having to pitch your voice to carry over the general background roar isn't exactly conducive to roleplaying. About the only reason to go would be to pitch in and run the screening room, and expose other people to stuff that was new to them...but apparently they've already got that well in hand.
I've recently been reminded that this is the weekend of VisionCon, the local fandom convention. I used to go regularly, but lately I've been less than enthusiastic about it (see last year's rant on the subject for reasons). I tried to get in touch with the guy who ran the anime room last year to see if he was running it again this year to volunteer to help out, but he never replied and I never bothered to try again. I don't know, maybe I'll get a Saturday-only-pass to browse the dealer room and see if I can locate Joe Moore (to whom I still need to give his Christmas present) and an old friend from school (and the only local Shadowfist player I know of) by the name of Kris Brown (who I want to alert to the online Shadowfist system, about which I still need to rant one of these days).
Honestly, most of the things that used to get me down to that 'con are now better satisfied by other means. I don't have to go there to see new anime anymore thanks to the online fansub community; I can get most anything I could have gotten in the dealer room from Amazon or other online sources; the guests are mostly actors from SF shows that aren't aired anymore or local authors I've barely heard of; and as for gaming, well, the con's never been the best place to go to game, because everyone's doing it at once and having to pitch your voice to carry over the general background roar isn't exactly conducive to roleplaying. About the only reason to go would be to pitch in and run the screening room, and expose other people to stuff that was new to them...but apparently they've already got that well in hand.
