Went to Lollapallooza to meet up with John Yost of Rhythm Revolution in “Kidzapalooza” – the kiddie section of the event. John has been doing the Kidzapalooza gig for years now. He called me up and asked if I wanted to help out, so I said sure. Basically I helped him set up, hand out stuff, help keep order, help clean up after each session, etc.

Lollapalooza 2010

John is a local Chicago musician and is in and has been in several Chicago bands. He is now doing drum circles and drum related performances. He is sponsored by Remo for Lollapalooza. So, if you need a do a corporate motivational event, drum circles for a private events or public events like this one, you can get more information here: drummingcircle.com.

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

My friend Mike and his wife Sue were supposed to meet up with me and then head to (their daughter) Marina’s apartment and meet up with her boyfriend, Aaron, to play Catan. However, Mike and Sue canceled at the last minute so I went without them. I was supposed to fly in Thursday night but due to storms in DC, my plane got in late at DFW (Dallas) and missed the connection to DEN (Denver). So I stayed overnight in Dallas and flew out on the earliest plane Friday morning. Got in, called Marina and she said she wanted to go hiking.

Marina on the peak of Deer Mountain

I said sure, so Marina and I drove from Boulder, Colorado, to the Rocky Mountain National Park, entering at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center. We hit the Deer Ridge Junction and got out of the car – still raining – so I didn’t take my camera, only Marina did since she had a backpack, so these pictures are mostly taken by Marina. Started at the Dear Mountain Trailhead, elevation 8930 feet. The trail is 3 miles long and the top of Dear Mountain is 10013 feet. (So we climbed 1083 feet…) I got annoyed at the zig-zag trail so I said to Marina, let’s go straight up. So we did. Got to the top, took pictures, and headed down.

Once we got back to Marina’s apartment, we play Catan till Marina got too tired. She drove me back to my hotel for the night. Next day we went shopping for expansion sets for Catan. Aaron popped in and we played more Catan. Was fun. Sunday, flew back out as usual…

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

Okay! I went to San Diego ComicCon 2010. First, the big news… Got talking to an independent publisher, and…

Dreadnought: Invasion Six will be (a) re-released as a graphic novel and (b) made into a radio play! How cool is that?

Anyway, here are the pictures from the con. Sorry, didn’t take too many pictures… (For some reason I got super-upgraded to a huge suite at Marriott, so I took pictures of the room, of course – so you’ll see a few pictures of that first…)

San Diego ComicCon 2010

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

New York by Train

I cracked my tooth earlier this year and I had to get it extracted. Next step was to get an implant, followed by attaching the crown (ceramic tooth). I went back to my Illinois dentist and he suggested an oral surgeon to do the extraction and implant. The dentist was going to do the crown. The cost of the whole procedure was: extraction $400, “flipper” $600 (partial denture to cover up the gaping hole), implant $2300, abutment (basically one screw) $800 and crown $1500. So I spend $400 for the extraction and $600 for the flipper. Now I still had to pay $4700!!! This is for one tooth. One! (And as it turns out, you don’t “need” the flipper at all, so that was a waste of money.)

You thought the US Military was paid too much for a toilet seat for $500? How about one dinky “abutment” screw for $800! So I started to look around and decided to go to Costa Rica to get my dental work done. Well, I need to do two trips, one for the implant (jaw bone to gum line) and one for crown (the fake tooth). It takes approximately 6 weeks to heal after the implant procedure. So Costa Rica was out. For one trip, it would have been cheaper, but not for two.

So I was bummed and just starting hitting Google and Yahoo and typing in all kinds of search terms an I found a dental clinic in New York who would do the implant, abutment and crown for $1800 (vs $4700)!!!! That’s a 62% discount!!!

Of course I was weary of the choice, I mean why would all other places in the US charge about $4700-$9000 and theses people can do it for a whopping discounted price of only $1800??? I mean they were even cheaper that Costa Rica (excluding air fare, of course, I mean just the dental costs)!!! So I asked them and they said they just do so many of these procedures that they can discount the price…

Okay, fine, but I still feel uneasy. What the heck – so I went on the train from WAS to NYP – taking the NorthEast Regional Amtrak. The train ride was not impressive at all. The physical train tracks were horrid – the train shook a lot.

I get to the dental clinic and there is no one in the waiting area! My first thought was I am soooo screwed… Well, after they took an x-ray and said I can get the implant without any bone graft. (If you have a missing tooth and don’t get an implant within a year or so, you start to lose bone and you may need to get a bone graft – that itself is another $1000…) I said great, lets do it! They shot me up with novocaine and the whole procedure took less than two minutes. They drill a hole in your bone – your head shakes like operating a jack hammer (but no pain at all). Then the dentist showed me the implant (a short post about 2mm-3mm wide and about 1cm tall). He literally screwed the post into my jaw with a ratchet. I thought I’d be spewing blood all over. But no, the entire operation was done and there wasn’t one drop of blood! Amazing.

So, I have to go back in six weeks to make sure it healed okay and if they give a go ahead, they’ll measure the area to fit the crown and then I need to come back again to have the crown fitted. (Good thing I didn’t go to Costa Rica – the airfare would have wiped out any savings in the procedure!) Well great, that was easy. All I had to do was take antibiotics for a week and done. There was a dull throbbing pain in my mouth for about ten days. (It didn’t hurtunless you touched the area.) Your results may differ! They gave me a high dose Motrin prescription but I didn’t bother getting it.

So, on the way back from NYP to WAS, I took the Acela an paid for First Class since I figured I won’t be taking the train next time. It was pretty nice. This train had some sort of shock system so it didn’t shake as much, but it still shook on the worst parts of the tracks. But hey, got a free lunch and free alcohol…

So where is this place? Here: ContemporaryDentalImplantCentre.com/

NOTE: They have a coupon for $395 on their site, you must print it and show it to them to get the discount. Then they say you need a consultation first – I said I need to get the implant in the same visit and they said that is fine. Even though I had the $395 coupon, they charged me up front for $1400 and when I get the crown, I pay $400. In my case, I didn’t care, $4700 vs $1800, hey, they could have charged me for the whole thing at once…

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

The following day (July 6), I did a self-directed walking tour of Dublin. Went around to a few cathedrals and took pictures, then Dublin Castle. After that, did the Jameson Distillery tour, then the Guinness Storehouse tour.

Next day (July 7), went on a rail tour – started early in the morning at 5:00am, starting at Hueston station in Dublin onto a high speed train to Limerick Junction, then to Limerick, then to the west coast of Ireland to the Cliffs of Moher, then Burren and to Galway – then back to Dublin – around 9:00pm.

The following day (July 8), I slept in since I was zonked out. I woke up and when I was doing my email, I found out that my friend Tim Costello had died of a heart attack – he was only 42. I was really bummed because it was Tim who went to Dublin previously and he was the one who told me where to go in Dublin. So, I rushed out to The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin and I ordered a Guinness (the picture below) and drank a toast to Tim.

Toast to Tim Costello, RIP, The Brazen Head, Dublin, Ireland

Click on the pic above from the trip on my pic site at generalgeneral.com. That night I just hung out in the concierge lounge of the hotel. Then I flew back to the US on July 9.

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

I need to stay in the Washington DC area for six months plus, flying in on Sundays and flying out on Thursdays (and sometimes Fridays) – meaning either a 4 night or 5 night stay per week, every week for my current consulting gig.

Right now, I am at a hotel that does give me a discounted rate but their customer service department is on the “very lacking” side of the equation. So, I am hunting around for another hotel.

Now, if the hotels are at sellout conditions on a frequent basis, there is no reason to deal. But they aren’t and they use Priceline and still have empty rooms on a daily basis (on the average of course, if there is a special event, the hotel may be sold out for a few days in the week).

So do you think they would sell me one dinky room on a weekly basis for more than they can get for Priceline or have that room go empty?

Empty.

All the Marriott and Sheraton (all brand levels) that I talked to would rather have the room go empty; or, if lucky, some pittance from Priceline – than to negotiate a long term deal. How idiotic can you be, especially when the economy super-sucks like it is now?

Aaargh!

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

As usual, if you click on the pic below, you’ll go to my pic site at generalgeneral.com. (I was going to move all my pics here or to the toservefan.com site but Google has locked onto my generalgeneral.com site for pictures for DragonCon – search on “DragonCon pics” – one of them is mine, so it would be insane to break that link!)

Convergence 2010
As usual, more costumes than typical cons, so that’s always a good thing. Party rooms were great. A lot of them ran out of food and drinks, but that’s a good thing – people had fun. And, for the people who threw parties, less to carry home… (No, really, I threw parties and if there is stuff left, I give it away, like to late night parties, etc. – no point in bringing it home – but that’s me …)

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

The media stars were all there behind booths so you could walk up and talk any of them. No one was really hounded, so you could just walk up and say hi. The only pic I took was of Dawn Wells (Mary Ann in “Gilligan’s Island”)… Just click on the pic below andyou will go to my pic site on generalgeneral.com:

CosPlayers at Florida SuperCon

But, the whole place was taken over by CosPlayers which was totally unexpected, especially from the web page description of the event. But apparently, it’s the annual CosPlay gathering there. Okay, so now I know. I took pictures, of course.

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

This was a four day long weekend cruise with singlescruise.com. As usual, there was a day before party at a designated hotel (Bahia Mar Resort – sorry, no pictures from there). A few dozen showed up at the hotel. (The whole group on the cruise was a little over 70.) The group was more or less cohesive throughout the cruise so it was more fun than my previous experience (where everyone just splits up into mini-groups and do their own thing). This is the most massive number of pictures I have taken, so I hope you have a good internet connection! 347 pictures!!! The pictures are on my generalgeneral.com site:

Royal Caribbean
Grandeur of the Seas

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.

My cousin Yuki flew in from Japan to visit my dad so I took a week off and went to visit them. Visited my mon’s grave site… That was the saddest part. Anyway, went to, as in drove from Oracle, AZ (north of Tucson) to the Grand Canyon. Stayed overnight then on the way back visited Sedona. Went to the Sonora Desert Museum on another day. And a few other places. Well, here are the pictures (it will take you to my pic site at generalgeneral.com)…

Cousin Yuki from Japan and Dad at the Grand Canyon

As for the pic above, don’t worry, there is another level behind the wall. It just looks treacherous, but it’s not.

© 2010, Stark Raving Nomad. All rights reserved.