Category Archives: on air

viewing las vegas

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I just uploaded my CES 2007 gallery – you can check it out here. I promise to do a real recap soon, but I’m just enjoying being at home and not having to talk in CASTER! VOICE! – by Thursday afternoon, I was speaking several octaves below where I started on Sunday and had this sexy whiskey-soaked rasp. My voice is just starting to come back now, so by Monday I should be ready to start talking again – good timing, since I have a huge training session Monday morning as well as the onboarding of a new astronaut. Something about no rest for the wicked .. anyway, check out the gallery. This, however, pretty much says it all:

Hee!

nevada dreamin’

Posted in international kimli, on air by

I leave for the airport in a few hours, and I am SO NERVOUS.

I’m petrified I’m going to make an ass of myself; that I’m going to do a horrible job; that the Soul Sucker will take one look at me and throw a hissyfit because I look more Jupiter than I do Los Angeles; that my flight information is wrong and I’m going to end up in Dubai; that I haven’t packed pants or bras. You name it, and I’m worried about it. My stomach hurts.

This is a (very bad) artist’s representation of what I look like right now:

Yes, I DO cast in a wedding dress. Don’t you?

Nervous.

fear and casting in las vegas

Posted in angst, on air by

I am not the most patient of girls, and every second I go without informative email makes me vibrate with angst – what if they’ve changed their mind? What if my request for incidental coverage pushed them over the edge? What if the Soul Sucker found out about my imminent return and put a stop to my unmarketable fat girl groove? Oh, stress. I like it much better when I’m not completely freaking out.

I tend to not mention my travels until I have all the details in my grubby little hands, but I need to do SOMETHING while I’m waiting for info so I will just spill the beans: I am going to Las Vegas next month to attend the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show.

I’m excited enough about going to the CES, but for me the real thrill is that Creative asked me to come back for a second year to provide commentary for the Fatal1ty shootouts that run throughout the event at the Creative Labs booth. This is the first time I’ve been asked back to do coverage, and I almost broke my neck with delight when I received the email asking me to work with them again (I went flying downstairs to tell Ed, who was at Josh’s place, and my pants were too long and I almost tripped on them causing death). I really did have a blast working with Creative last year, and I’m annoyingly beyond giddy at a) the chance to work with them again, and b) being asked *back*. They liked me! They really liked me!

As usual though, I’m also spending a lot of my time freaking out. I still don’t have hotel information, and have convinced myself that I’m going to have to sleep under the booth and shower in the Bellagio fountains. I asked for incidental funds this year because last year it wasn’t negotiated and I had a hard time coming up with the money to cover taxi and transit fares, let alone the occasional meal I ate. Logic tells me they will pay me for my work, since they did last year – but until get confirmation, I will assume otherwise and worry about it since I have to take a week off from work to do this gig and I don’t have paid vacation time.

That would be enough stress for anyone, but I’ve only just begun to delve into my large sack of mental issues:

I get serious performance anxiety when I have to cast, and terrible stage fright until I’m in the zone. I’ve thrown up with nervousness before, and I know I’ll be spending time between now and January 8th with my stomach in knots for fear that I will suck and make a total ass of myself.

THEN! Because that is just NOT ENOUGH ANGST FOR ME! There’s MORE:

You can’t market Mama Cass! CES 2006 was the event where my high from doing a great job and all the wonderful praise it brought me came to a crashing and crushing low, courtesy of someone who does not work for Creative Labs. I will undoubtedly be interacting with this person again, and the very thought of it fills me with every emotion an actor can display: fear, loathing, anger, scorn, various negative thoughts about myself, the urge to wear nothing but brown leaves. I will smile pretty and make nice because that is the professional thing to do, but it will also be a struggle to keep from a) punching him (not likely) and b) hating myself (very likely) because I know what they think of me. So many conflicting scary emotions, capped off with a whipped topping of delight – and all because one person chooses to judge me based on my cover and not the contents within.

I win, though – Creative asked me *back*. :D

wishfully naked

Posted in angst, everyday kimli, on air by

Hey, Vancouver – where’s a good place to get pierced? I’ve decided that I want a labret, and I want one now. It’s actually been in my head for about 4 years, so it’s time I stopped thinking about it and just did it. I also want many, many tattoos. This is what happens when Ed a) watches a lot of Miami Ink, and b) spends the rest of his time ogling naked Suicide Girls. It’s been a really long time since my last body mod of any kind, and I’m starting to feel the itch. Bring on the ink and steel! If I was younger and hotter, I would totally want to be a Suicide Girl. Alas, there’s no market for strange looking naked fat girls. It’s too bad, because being naked on the internet totally fits in to my whole “extroverted introvert” game plan. Plus, deep down? I’m an absolute exhibitionist. It’s just too bad I look the way I do and all.

This post officially marks a successful run of NaBloPoMo – one post per day for the entire month of November. Hell, I even double posted on a couple of days AND was out of the country without a computer part way through the challenge. That didn’t stop me from posting though – I totally rock the internets. I rock them old school.

Our efforts to get to the Space Station yesterday ended up being in vain – the Space Bosses sent us all home around 2pm because we were facing some pretty heavy snowfall. It turned to rain later that evening, and promptly froze over night. I’m working from home again because I couldn’t get the car out of our spot – it’s stuck tight. The weather is warming up though, and all this crap should be gone by the weekend; just in time for Josh and Shan to move in for realz yo.

I have Space Surveys to write, and UPS to hate on. They charged me $37 in “brokerage fees” for a box of audio cables worth $45. Thanks, guys. You are in no way complete fucking gouging assholes who should be set on fire.

wouldja look at that

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I uploaded pictures from the event – take a gander at the gallery here. Yes, I was wearing jeans under my dress. Yes, I know that’s stupid and it looks horrible but it was COLD in there. Stop picking on me!

I’m working from home today because I am feeling under the weather. I knew it was a bad idea to lick Livia’s toothbrush, what with all the diseases and syringes in our hotel room. Still, it was fun. Mere germs aren’t going to stop me from conquering the internets!

Oh, and the pictures aren’t in order at all – sorry about that.

san francisco: the recapification

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I’m home! I had an incredible time in San Francisco; probably the best time I’ve had at any event to date. I met some very cool people, made some eloquent and passionate pleas for the future of professional gaming and video games as a spectator sport, and absolutely did not get any kind of heat stroke at all.

When I landed on Friday evening, I took the BART downtown and made my way to the dinner VIA held for the conference speakers. Here I met the rest of the g0d girlz that I hadn’t met before, as well as other people in the industry. After a tasty dinner and good talkings, we headed back to the scary hotel for sleep and bed bugs before the event on Saturday.

The turnout wasn’t what the organizers hoped, but there were quite a few members of the press and even some drop-ins who had found out about the event that morning. The speakers were varied and (mostly) had really interesting things to say. I took the stage around noon for a brief introduction to video game commentary before we broke for lunch, when we set up the PCs for a demo between Livia and Therese of g0d.

The discussion topic for my panel was the Future of e-Sports. We had Rafik Bryant, a professional Q4 player; Jamie aka Missy from g0d, myself, and our sexy moderator Bjorn from VIA. I was last to speak, and I think I did pretty good – my nerves had worn off by that point, and I surprised myself with my throbbing passion for competitive gaming and the coverage Inside the Game does. I also told the story of how Ed and I met and got engaged, and his proposal to me and our QuakeCake received laughs and applause, which I lapped up like a kitten.

After our panel I did a snafu-filled casting demo (we couldn’t get the spectator mode to load on the laptop/LCD screen, so I casted off Therese’s monitor with no visuals and no sound) that seemed to impress people. I also did a couple of audience shootout casts at the end of the event, and those were a blast because it’s fun to watch people get annihilated by girls. I’m pretty sure I did iTG proud, and I had a lot of fun at the conference both participating and hearing (most of) the other people speak.

After the event we headed back to the hotel for dropping off and changing, then it was off to the waterfront for fun. Bjorn and his brother Carl (Karl?) are evil and wouldn’t let us catch a trolley, so we walked from Pier 1 to Pier 39 in search of food. Just went we had given up all hope, we fell into a Hard Rock Café and ate until we ran out of money. We were too late to the Pier to visit the many shops, but we did go on the Magic Carpet Ride which was both disturbing and a great deal of fun – video to be released soon, much to the dismay of some. Hee!

Sunday was a completely free day for us, so Livia, Therese, Sara and I got up relatively early and hit the town for shopping and sight seeing. All of us had been to SF before, but I was the only one who had never been around the town (apparently, there’s more to SF than the Ramada Inn and the convention hall where WCG2K4 was held). With that in mind, Sara came up with an itinerary that allowed us heaps of fun. After some morning shopping, we made our way back to the Piers (by trolley this time – :P Bjorn) to go out on a BOAT CRUISE !!

I adore water. The cruise we took was about an hour long, and took us from Pier 43.5 to the Golden Gate Bridge (which I SAW with my OWN EYES) then back by Angel Island and Alcatraz before docking again. There was an audio guide to go along with the tour that was really interesting. The whole thing was absolutely incredible and I would recommend it to anyone visiting San Francisco! Too much fun, and I took a zillion pictures. After the tour we wobbled back to Pier 39 for lunch and a bit of shopping before we had to go back to the hotel – Sara left on Sunday afternoon, and she had to finish packing and airporting. Our hasty goodbyes said, Livia Therese and I went back downtown – we still had money left, and I’d never really had time to do any shopping in SF before unless you count the Radio Shack which I definitely do not.

Thoroughly shopped out (we closed down the mall) and our good deed of the weekend done (we held a stakeout to find the owner of a credit card left behind in the ATM), we went back to the hotel room to get ready for our early morning departure and coo at the fruits of our shopping labours. I very rarely get to go girlie shopping with actual girls, so I had a lot of fun doing that. Bjorn and his brother showed up and we watched cartoons (I heart Adult Swim) until we had to sleep in preparation of our very early Monday mornings.

The airport was an adventure in ass marbles, because the airline sent me from International to Domestic to the OTHER International before an airline would admit to having me on their plane roster. I slept on the flight, landed safely and made it through customs with very little anal probing, and came home to cats and bacon – all in all, a very awesome trip that I would repeat in a heartbeat.

I’ll upload some pictures tomorrow, but I could really use a shower right now and maybe also some Diet Coke.

san francisco hooray!

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We’re all done, and it was awesome. I strutted my casting stuff and it went over really well – I love talking gaming with gamers and industry folk. Sara took a ton of pictures for me, which I’ll get online later. Tomorrow is sight seeing and shopping day, then I fly home nice and early on Monday morning. At the moment I’m exhausted and starving, but I am content with goodness.

leaving on a jet plane

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My post disappeared! It was totally awesome and Pulitzer Prize worthy, and WordPress ate it! I am incensed with fury! Is this where I sue people?

AS I WAS SAYING, I’m leaving for San Francisco in just over an hour. I am nervous but prepared (at least I will be once I put on a shirt), and looking forward to adventure. I get into town just after 6pm, at which point I need to find my way downtown unmolested. Thanks to the Power of the Internet I think I have it all figured out, and soon I’ll be on my way.

Last time I was in San Francisco, I didn’t get to do anything. Our group was way too busy with our event and my heat stroke, but this trip promises for more free time. I plan to a) not get heat stroke and b) at least see the Golden Gate Bridge and perhaps stand in its shadows, sealing my fate.

That would have been hilarious if you were a gaming nerd familiar with the ins and outs of WCG theme songs, trust me.

So, I’m off for fame and glory and maybe some of those super tasty airline peanuts. Yay! Adventure! I will try very hard to check in because I do not want to fail at NaBloPoMo, and I will take many pictures this time instead of coming across my camera when I unpack and go “oh, there it is. too bad I didn’t use it.” like I always do.

aaaaand scene.

international kimli of mystery

Posted in on air, vroom vroom by

The sheer enormity of my balls got the better of me this morning. I wanted to get one last ride into work before the weather turned wet for the winter, and since it’s lovely and sunny and clear out, I thought today would be the day for Sally and I to rule the streets.

Turns out that day should have been several weeks ago – it’s COLD out there. I was stuck in traffic for a very long time, and I can’t feel my face or legs or tail. I’m frozen to the bone! Riding in today was not a very good idea at all. If I was just a little smarter, I would have rethought my plan as I was chiseling the ice off Sally’s seat – but I’m not very smart sometimes, and this is another one of my less-than-shining moments. I am really, really not looking forward to going home this afternoon. I might have to bail out of the space station a little early so I can be home before sundown – not only am I afraid of being attacked by zombies, I do not want to risk riding when it dips below 0. I hate being cold almost as much as I hate the undead.

I am going to take part in NoBloPoMo, the lazy man’s alternative to NaNoWriMo. Instead of writing a novel in 30 days, your objective is to merely make at least one post every day for the entire month of November. HAH, I scoff. I’ve been writing daily updates for almost six straight years – I can do one month, easy! Oh, yes. Fame and fabulous randomly drawn prizes will totally be mine. Actually, there’s already a wrench in the ointment – I’m going out of town this month, and it’ll make daily updating tricky. I’ll still update, though. Even if I have to do it by cell phone and pay out the ass per update, I will not fail my mission! To the internet – and beyond!

I’m going to California! I was invited to go to the VIA Couples, Computers and Gaming conference in San Francisco. I can’t wait! I’ll be staying with the g0d girlz and doing commentary for their demo games, as well as appearing on a discussion panel. I fly out on Friday the 10th and return early Monday morning. I’m so excited! I love the g0d girlz, and I’m in a unique position for this particular topic, given how Ed and I met, got engaged, and celebrated our wedding. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m totally looking forward to it. Yay for adventure!

 

happy halloween!