by Techburrito Executive Editor, Alan Natale

Today marked the SECOND day many of us Nerds tried to register for Comic-Con 2011. As a blogger I’m on a mission to get a PRESS pass- I tried to get a PRESS pass back at Comic-Con last July to wit they told me I need register it online for the coming year. Fair enough I thought. Registration for Comic-Con 2011 was set originally for November 1st however the EPIC (seriously, its business name) registration system used by Comic-Con couldn’t handle multiple connections and was shut down within an hour with a promise things would be fixed.

Fast forward to this morning at 5:30 am when my alarm went off to make some coffee, feed/walk the dog then be ready to register for my PRESS Comic-Con 4-day pass at 6am sharp. Comic-Con “FIXED” the registration problem and everything was at the ready to rock out tickets online. Immediately, it was November 1st all over again. Right off the bat I got to enjoy the error message you see above. After fifteen minutes of refresh button insanity, I turned to the good people of Twitter trending #Comic-Con. The top tweets were from astute Clowns:

Someone else tweeted that, despite Comic-Con’s inability to service multitudinous clicks to the registration page, Twitter seemed to be able to handle the rising tide of tweets from everyone about the registration frustration. The winner of the Tweet-Comic-Con IRE awards in my book was the quick Café-Press response of a T-shirt:

After two hours of retrying while simultaneously commiserating with fellow Comic-Con would-be Attendees on Twitter, FINALLY Comic-Con called the time of death and shut the registration down. Comic-Con posted a note which admitted that they needed to stop AGAIN and figure out why they couldn’t handle the online registration. They also offered a pathetic excuse for SORRY. Arrrrgh! Some people tweeted that they got tickets because they had fast (COX) internet connections; alas I only have DSL so I kept getting the first page then ERROR.

With all respect, I suppose I would be embarrassed to admit I spent two and a half hours trying to register for 2011 Comic-Con tickets but that would suppose I cared what anyone thought. In all seriousness, Comic-Con has become a major stop for Press, Bloggers and Tech such as myself. It’s also a water shed for video content relating to Pop Culture, the Film Industry and the lucrative Gaming Industry… not to mention Comic Books/Graphic Novels. There’s a lot at stake for some of us who make content off of Comic-Con. And yah, it’s just plain fun to go to the thing.

Well, Comic-Con and Epic Registration, I hope you get your shit together. One NICE thing you could do to be fair is (shaking fist) to nullify those registrations that went through today and on November 1st to even the playing field if/when you correct the online registration issue. Yeah, that probably won’t happen.

Fellow Comic-Con Would-Be Attendees- feel free to commiserate here. Sure it’s lame but it’s not that bad (who am I kidding?). I’d cry on the shoulders of my Meltdown Comics pals but they are so in-the-know, they got their four day passes at the Con last year. I’d have done so as well- but I didn’t KNOW you could do that. Yup, a few weeks after the last Comic-Con it occurred to me to ask a close Meltdown Comics pal exactly how he managed to always nail down 4 day passes every year. He confessed they were hush-hush obtainable at the Con!  THANKS FOR TELLING ME!!!!! Ah friends. Tell you what- to make you feel better – Techburrito.com’s Robot Burrito is offering free Nerd hugs.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the smugness we can expect from Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereiera who’ll assuredly put us AND Comic-Con down in one swoop with his rapier passive-aggressive wit. We can also look forward to wry jokes about how the Nerds brought this on themselves from Nerd Patron Saints like Chris Hardwick (Nerdist), Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton.

I say shrug it off. What was awesome about COMIC-CON 2011 – THE REGISTRATION PART DEUX was the camaraderie and shear sense of humor displayed on Twitter while trying to get some damn tickets. I was impressed how some were able to keep checking the registration site AND make a video. I loved the hilarious remarks like “Comic-Con should’ve checked itself before it wrecked itself” and “If Comic-Con had a face, I’d punch it in the balls.” I love it!

by Techburrito Executive Editor, Alan Natale

So you have a smartphone, unlimited texting and a wheel barrel full of beer in you- not illegal unless you are stupid enough to drive. But is it illegal to text? Should be- especially since it was bad enough we had the capability to drunk dial… and now we can drunk text. Don’t even tell me you have never gotten a drunk text from somebody, if you haven’t you eventually will I promise you. So tempting after a few to just fire off a harmless little text note right?

There needs to be a new breath-a-lizer app (Free of course) that allows you to breath into the phone and if it perceives a blood alcohol level over the amount that would make texting seem like a good idea. Yup, in your drunken judgment you think it’s fine to text to someone something totally NOT what you would’ve texted a few drinks prior; wouldn’t it be cool if the app could shut off the texting ability. Who am I kidding, even if there was such and app who’d be sober to fire it up and care to use it?

I’ve had to be firm, well, actually angry with some friends who send out MASS DRUNK TEXTS in the middle of the night and if you’re like me and forget to turn your phone off before bed- the phone chimes up several times around 3 a.m.! I have the iPhone 3Gs and still to this day I don’t think we are given the choice to block callers or texts which is a downer. But I’m not gonna lie, I have to admit when I read the inebriate drivel most of the time it’s pretty funny and down right blackmail material so far be it for me to moralize. Dear drunk texters, as long as you don’t drink and drive I say TEXT ON with your bad self and never be surprised if I post your texts on my blog or twitter or both for all to enjoy.