Phil’s Filings

1) Dear PADI Diving Society:

I already renewed my subscription.  You sent me that nice duffel bag, remember?  I got it Saturday.  It’s the third one you’ve sent in the past three years.  You wanted me to renew early so that you wouldn’t have to send more paper in the mail.  More paper == wasted == bad for the environment.

So, then, why did you send me get another reminder to renew my subscription as well as a separate mailing thanking me for renewing and oh why don’t you renew for another year?  Please coordinate your computer systems better, okay?  Thanks.

2) I’m wanting to save some voice mails from my phone, but I don’t want to pay Verizon a lot of money to do so.  Can someone recommend a good Windows dialer program that’s A) Free; B) Isn’t Spy/Malware and C) allows someone to use the keypad during the dialing program so that I can enter in my pin number and trigger the proper voice menu commands?

3) My dad is looking to get rid of the old 386 PC that I used during college.  On that hard drive is a bunch of my old files, including fanfic I downloaded, saved E-mails — none of it is vital to my existence, but it is a snapshot of my digital life for about 6 years.  The problem is the battery in it is dead and it doesn’t want to bootup properly.  I think if I had DOS on 3.5″ disk, I could get it up and running.  However, I don’t have DOS.  The machine has no CD-ROM drive, either.  Suggestions on how to get my data off it, including but not limited to a way for me to get DOS on 3.5″ disk?

So, you’re probably wondering what happened to my “Blog A Day” and “366 Project”, huh?

They’re dead, Jim.

I’ve got a huge deadline looming at work, and they’ve asked us to put in at least 48 hours a week.  Plus, with Toy Fair starting two weeks ago, my trip out of town last weekend, I either have had no time to post, or I’ve posted trivial nonsense.  Plus, the pictures that I had taken were pretty stupid.

I don’t want to do that.  I want to post topics of interest at times.  I want to take pictures that are of interesting things.  I don’t want to do something just for the sake of doing something.  Some people think that that’s a valid way to do something — as long as you do it, you’ll improve.  And that’s fine.

Me?  I want to provide more than that.  Not saying that everything I post will be worthwhile, but I don’t want it to be “Oh, hey, here’s my daily post.  Good night.”  Because it was starting to devolve into something close to that state.

So, I’m still around.  I’ll still be writing.  It’ll just be better.

I hope.

Heading up north for the weekend to rehearse for an upcoming wedding and then to party.  Hold my calls.

Put up the Hasbro press kit images today; it’s really cool to have all these super huge pictures of the toys.

That bumped up the total number of images to a figure that’s pretty impressive.  (Any guesses?  Anyone?  Bueller?)

So’s the fact that in less than 6 days we did 175 GB of bandwidth transfer.  Yikes.

… still unknown.  The press kit images of Power Rangers wasn’t uploaded, so I still have to get those on the main site once they are.  Plus, I still have to get those Jakks Pacific WWE images online.

So, uh, I guess Toy Fair’s not done yet.

http://toyfair08.asmzine.com

Today was our last day at the fair, and we’re pretty much done with the coverage. I’m uploading the final galleries now, but whether or not I mention them on the front page may depend on how long I can stay awake and/or functional. I’m very tired all of a sudden, and I’m really cold, so I’m having problems keeping the brain working.

Mattel had a bunch of DC stuff on display, including toys for the upcoming The Dark Knight movie, their DC Unlimited line of figures, and Barbie dolls dressed as Supergirl and Black Oracle. They also had Cars, Speed Racer, Hot Wheels and Matchbox, and toys from the new animated movie Kung-Fu Panda. We were unable to get an appointment for their Girls’ Line, so all of our Barbie coverage comes from their press kit images.

Bandai also gave us a press kit to post. We have pics from Ben 10, Blue Dragon, Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, Girlz Connect and Tamagotchi.

I’m also in the process of downloading Jakks Pacific’s WWE Press Kit, as they did not have an actual show room.

So, definitely by this time tomorrow, ASM’s Toy Fair 2008 Coverage will be over. Anyone care to guess how many images? Post your answers below, and tomorrow we’ll all find out the result.

The past two days have been really lousy blog posts; I wrote them up but couldn’t post them. But I did write them!

Anyway, it’s Toy Fair 2008! Actually, it’s close to being over. Our last day of appointments is tomorrow, so the bulk of the work is done. Saturday was the big Hasbroday, with Transformers Animated and Transformers Universe, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, G.I. Joe and more. We also had our first LEGO images.

Yesterday we had a whole slew of companies, so many that I just direct you to the main page rather than link them all here. We had Mezco, NECA, Tonner Doll Company, DiD Corp., Comic Images, Amok Time, Toyrrific, Stikfas, Mindstyle, Diamond Select Toys, Maisto, SophiaDolls, Toynami, Underground Toys, Playmates, Playhut, Organic, One2Believe, Huckleberry, Verde.

Then today we had JUN Planning, Square Enix, Dark Horse Comics, McFarlane Toys, MiniMag, Saizon,
Shocker Toys, Delta Children’s Products, KIDdesigns, Wild Republic, Gentle Giant, Corgi International, DC Unlimited, more Diamond Select and Kotobukiya.

Almost 3000 images, if I remember the gallery program’s last output. That’s a lot.

I see a bunch of stuff I want to buy, but thankfully, I know I have a budget to follow.

The URL again is http://toyfair08.asmzine.com. Tell all your friends!

I’m feeling even more exhausted today.

This isn’t good; I’m already feeling exhausted after only the first day of Toy Fair….

Over lunch I ran a few errands.

And I wanted to kill a great number of people driving on the road. Good Lord, people, use your damned directional signals — that’s why they are installed on your cars.

Please don’t block part of my lane; there is plenty of room for you to pull into the left turn lane, so use it.

When I’m walking to my car, don’t cut across the parking lanes. Yes, you avoided hitting me, but you should have avoided the situation altogether.

Yes, I know there’s a ton of snow in the parking lots, taking up precious parking spaces. But please, don’t block the goddamn driving lane to wait for someone who’s still packing the trunk of his car. Drive around and find another spot or at least make room for people to pass you.

Oh, and then when a second person wants to pull out, kudos for backing up and letting him do so — that’s why I stopped a long way behind you. But then, pull into that spot — don’t block that spot so I can’t pull in as you wait for the first spot to open up.

And we’re supposed to get a bunch more snow on Sunday, making things even worse. Oh, Lord, it’s gonna be hell.