Don’t get mad, get even.

Well, actually I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I finally pulled the trigger and did it all in one day. Pretty simple and straightforward project. Install 3 4-ft florescent light bars in the garage.

The only real snag was pulling apart that old power box that fed power to the garage door opener. I wanted to splice power off of it to give power to another outlet installed on the other side of the garage. But when I opened it I just stared at it for a bit. The wiring job was completely out of whack, I can’t believe that stuff like this isn’t inspected when selling a house. It was a rats nest, and well, can’t have that. I spent a good 30 minutes trimming wires and organizing all the paths. I didn’t take pictures since I was rushing to finish while the sun was up. But here’s some pictures I snapped after finishing.

The hardware:

The boxes and wiring:

This powers the first light bar (not currently plugged in), if you look carefully you’ll see an outlet on the top:

End result:

Hopefully soon I’ll be able to put the car back on jack stands to work out the issues with the front suspension. Beyond that all that’s left is to adjust the dampener settings a bit and adjust the endlinks.

Oh yeah forgot, the radiator is cracked. Really unfortunate since I was on a roll with 0 fluid leaks. So that must be replaced soon, no biggie, that’s like $200 at the most. But since I have that whole assembly out I might as well upgrade the intercooler. But that ain’t cheap.

So I found a blog that is linked to mine and is complaining that I don’t update enough.

I often find myself typing a blog post then just deleting it. It’s hard to try and keep the blog on track with my original goal (post about my projects or related fun). Lately I’ve just been doing a lot of ranting and random posting. I did update the project page, well I only left half the updates on there and took some off. About a week from now there should be a new project update, but that’s all still a big if.

Anyways, I received this today:

Well… I’ve been busy. Mostly due to the lack of money. And well… just started summer classes… drats.

But a new project is coming along, despite my existing ones. That’s all for now~

These burgers were pretty famous so I had to try one. I was in Sacramento to pick up an AC hose/pipe and an o-ring, so I figured I might as well stop by.

It has a grilled cheese skirt, awesome. Well it doesn’t look as awesome in this picture because I ordered it to go and they wrapped it up. Watching them make it was awesome. It was tasty; definitely will go back there again when I can. On a side note, I don’t know if they’re really an inn, but their ’storefront’ was a tiny red shop and was easy to miss.

Squeeze Inn
7918 Fruitridge Rd.
Sacramento, CA 95820
(916) 386-8599

are made by like, Fischer Price. Not sure what the deal is, but 215/45/17 tires cause rubbing on the outer lip of the fenders (both sides) and rubbing on the inside of one fender. Well, at least the tires are okay, I could care less if the lips of the fender lining melt/wear off. I’ll take a picture when it does happen, and like all pictures, never post them here.

EDIT: Wow I read RK’s posts and looks like mine need more detail. Rewrite!

Day -1: I woke up around 10am, sat around until I got hungry and ate lunch. Double checked everything and I was on the road by some time around 12pm. The trip there wasn’t too bad. Didn’t manage to sleep well the night before, but somehow I wasn’t tired. 6-7 hours later I arrived at Crystal’s place and well, met Crystal, Suika, and Db. By now it was somewhere around dinner time so we sat around and waited for Blargkkake and his friend (I’m sorry but I forgot your name). We headed over to a ramen shop, which Crystal says is well known around this area. I also forgot the ramen shop name, I really should have taken more pictures but despite a better camera than the last, I am just too lazy to haul around my new one.

The ramen shop was actually run by Japanese people, and the food tasted great. The prices were decent as well. There was a ton of manga and magazines, but they were all in Japanese. IIRC, this was the first time Db had real Japanese ramen, not the army stuff. He also learned how to use chopsticks in a matter of minutes, which is cool. After we sat around for a bit and went over to Crystal’s friend’s place to crash for the night, since our hotel reservation starts on Wednesday. This was when I found out how Db is way Army hardened. He just lies down on the floor and falls asleep within the first few minutes. Damn.

Day 0: We wake up around 7am and get out the door by 7:40am since Jasper (Crystal’s friend) had to go to work. We headed back to Crystal’s place and sat around for a while as everyone started to wake up. Then we packed up, again, and headed over to the general direction of the LACC to get to our hotels. Since we couldn’t check in until 2pm, and it was around 11am, we headed over to Little Tokyo, which was impossible for us to find for some odd reason. We ended up in a place that looked like Mexico, then New York. We also learned that most of the parking is Valet parking and they race your cars everywhere. Not cool. No dumb ass valet driver is going to touch my car, especially if he’s going to take hard turns around the parking lot with the pedal floored.

We eventually found parking under Kinokuniya bookstore. We bought some merch from Kinokuniya and left shortly after since we were running a bit late. Forgot where we ate lunch, I think it was Carls Jr. We got to the hotel and Jon and his group already checked in, so we moved our junk into the hotel room. After Banquo arrived we headed over to the LACC to pre-reg. Crystal helped us get our reg passes, which was way cool. Can’t forget to mention about the DS pictochat sessions while in reg line. Me and Banquo turned chatroom B into /b/ then jumped ship into chatroom A and turned that into /a/, then /jp/. After that we walked around then sat in front of the arcade until it opened. Db played Metal Marines which was hilarious.

When the arcade finally opened, we were way dissapointed with the game selection. Additionally the prices were WAY over the top. Initial D 4 was $1.50 a game, and seeing that my arcade owns a pair, the manufacturers recommended price per game was $1. Their cards were 3 credits, which means $6 for a card, holy crap. We only charge something like $3.60 for our cards and $0.60 a game. They had more games, but all were waay over prices. The fighting game cabinets were $0.50 which is pushing it, but acceptable. They had the large stand up fighting game cabinets. Unfortunately for them, they left Time Crisis 4 unlocked. Fortunately for me, the arcade I work at has the exact same cabinet model. Free games for us for a bit until the fuzz came in and locked it up. That was pretty much it, after we went back to the hotel, ate dinner at somewhere I couldn’t remember, then crashed.

Day 1: First day of AX; destination, Expo hall! There weren’t any panels that really interested me, so I wanted to hit up the dealers hall. Well so did everyone else, and we were pretty far back in line. Thankfully Suika got there early and was in line. Waiting in line consisted of drawing more explicit images in Pictochat on my DS, watching someone win a bottle of bubble soap in a raffle, watching a friend of that person drink the bubble soap followed by other friends, and stopping Banquo from drinking the bubble soap. No matter how nasty, stupid, vile of a liquid you drink, you’re not going to look any more cooler or get any more respect… Just probably a case of ingested chemical poisoning. We also were hunting for RK and WM; thinking that WhiteMage would find us first (which would later lead to us finding the elusive RK) we made a sign much like the ones the drivers carry at the airport when picking someone up at the arrival terminal. Well it didn’t work, not surprising.

When we finally got inside, I ended up just buying some random bits, trying not to spend too much money on the first day. We stuck the sign on the back of Banquo’s backpack hoping that WhiteMage would come out and find us. Didn’t work either, and the AX staff ripped it off his backpack. I could have sworn I had way more pictures from Day 1 but I think I might have lost them, somehow…

We decided to go to the AMV contest, so Db, Banquo, and I, lined up outside in the heat. We knew that RK and WM were going to go to the AMV contest, so we called them and tried to find them in line. Didn’t work either… WM said that she sent RK to find us… Nope. Anyways, it turned out the reason why they made us wait outside was because they didn’t finish setting up the queue lines indoors in the Concourse Area. They moved us in there, where we waited another hour or so. The three of us bought lunch at one of the convention center’s cafeterias. Db bought a sandwich for $8. It was like 8 inches long and had some stale looking ham and cheese. I ended up buying a cheeseburger with fries. I only wanted the burger but guess what, they come with fries so no matter what, it’s gonna cost like $10. Damn. Banquo had it the worst; be bought some sandwich wrap (which made him mildly sick for the next two days) and some danish that smelled like sugar and butter. It’s like most British food, tastes bad and costs a lot. We finally got our tickets, and well by that time we had to make our way to the Nokia theater to get seated to watch the AMV contests. Oh I forgot to mention, we had to check in our bags which sucked. Db had to check in his huge backpack and his No’dachi sword which he bought earlier in the day. That costed him $3 each for both items.

So here we’re lining up to enter the Nokia Theater. And this was a bad move on my part. Turns out they actually have a real security check being run by trained people. Not good, since I had by 3″ folder knife in my pocket. I try concealing it by clipping it to my crotch area. I figure they’d think it’s the belt buckle, and well they can’t feel around that area since that’s sexual harassment. But, if I get caught, I’d be screwed… So I just put the knife with my wallet into the little bins they give you as you pass through the metal detector. And somehow they didn’t care that I had a knife, rather, they found my car key and 2-way alarm pager to be suspicious looking. Lucky… I’ll refrain from commenting on the security staff.

AMV’s were for the most part pretty good, Db made a joke comment about cancer (I suppose it’s an inside joke), it was funny at the time… lol. End of Day 1 and lo and behold, RK actually finds us. Awesome-sauce. We all go to Denny’s for a late night dinner.

Day 2: This day had way more stuff. David Hayter panel and the Jyukai concert featuring Yoko Ishida. Both panels were way awesome and I’ll just leave out the small details because my horrible grasp at the Englsh language won’t be able to convey its awesomeness. We also checked out the other rooms, like the console gaming room, table top gaming room, and maid cafe. We left early and went out to get dinner at Yoshinoya’s and drag RK with us. Food was good but the dessert was something to talk about. Db and I ordered the cheesecake and Banquo ordered the strawberry shortcake. Both were insanely sweet to the point I could feel my teeth rotting. RK chose the smarter option and ordered a salad as his side, not a dessert.

Day 3: Shokotan and Masquerade! Shokotan concert was awesomesauce. It turned out that this was Shokotan’s first live concert. Pretty cool that she chose AX to be the place of her first live concert. Masquerade, eeeeh… it was okay. There was an awesome Bahamut costume but somehow she recieved the lowest craftmanship award… wtf. I was planning to go the Mega 64 panel but some other stuff came up and I missed it, oh well big deal, I haven’t kept up with their stuff lately. We ended the day with more expo hall browsing. Banquo and Db spent a great deal of time in the table top gaming room playing Maid RPG and other various D&D’esque games. I watched suika beat people off of guilty gear in the console gaming room. At this point in time it’s confirmed that WM does not want to meet us and is doing what she can to avoid us. How did we know? Well her phone calls only served to figure out our location so that she would know where not to go to see us. Cool. We went to Yoshinoya’s again for dinner. Once again dessert was interesting. I followed RK and ordered a salad this time. Db ordered a strawberry shortcake because Banquo claimed it was way sweeter than the cheesecake we ordered last time. Banquo decided to order the flan pudding, whatever it was… the syrup tasted like melted tootsie rolls and the rest was like brown sugar and crisco. Db decided to bring some back for our roommates to sample. lol.

Day 4: Last day of AX, boo. Despite having to wake up early every day and staying up way late, it’s been a fun journey so far. Banquo leaves way fricking early to line up for a David Hayter signature. He’s been trying for 4 days to get his AR-15 stock signed. Well he finally got it. RK and I joined him in line; RK got his MGS3 box signed while I got my Buck Bantam 3″ folder knife signed, on the blade. Way awesome… but now I need a new folder knife to carry. There weren’t any good panels to go to today so we spent the rest of our time in the expo hall. Crystal was awesome and got us exhibitor passes to let us stay past closing of the exhibit hall and grab some super discounted stuff. Unfortunately I didn’t buy anything… mostly because I had no money. Blargkkake hooked us up with 1 h-doujin each, which was cool. We ended up helping out Hen Da Ne with hauling literally one ton (read: 2000lbs) or so of h-doujins and related h-materials into 3 different cars. The guys at the booth gave us $10 each for our efforts, lol. Dinner is paid for, woot. I also managed to nab two large posters from the Bandai booth when they were closing, A Gurren Lagann poster and a Haruhi Suzumiya poster. Awesome. We then headed over to a cafe (the one that served horrible food at a stupidly high price) to meet up with RK. WM once again calls us and asks us about our AX experience. And well no one really cared, we just wanted to meet up with WM. And like expected, she didn’t reveal herself. Cool… After sitting for a few hours to rest up and looking through Blargkkake’s Companion Box/Chaff Grenade/Blister Rocket (read: $2000-$3000 worth of H-doujins, H-games, H-novels, H-whatever), we headed out.

This is when we parted ways with RK. Sadness. Hopefully we’ll meet again. The rest of the group boarded the shuttle to the hotel Suika, Crystal, and Blarg were previously staying at. Apparently they found a place that sold decent food for a decent price. Amazing… to bad we didn’t know this before. Take note, none of us ate anything since breakfast. After dinner we brought Banquo back to his car and went our seperate ways. Oh, also forgot to mention. Banquo rushed out the door and managed to forget a pair of pants and a sock and $5. We gave those to him before he left. Crystal and Suika stayed back at the LACC for the AX staff party, while Db, Blarg, and I went over to Jasper’s place to crash for the night. We managed to get some In-n-out for Db to try out before he left the next morning; California specialty.

Going home: Woke up at 7am, once again. Swung by Crystal’s place to drop off Blargkkake, who promptly fell asleep. We all bid our farewells and Db and I left to get to Burbank Airport. We got there in good time thanks to almost no traffic. Last of the group to go; I bid my farewell to Db and he was on his way. On that note I also still have his No’Dachi since it wouldn’t have been easy to carry on board or pass through check-in. It was a 6 hour drive back up, I drove at my own pace, which actually ended up being quite fast. It was actually quite hot outside the entire way up, around 100*F or more. Lucky my AC worked, sort of. Got home around 4:30pm or so and slowly unpacked.

What an insane weekend. My first AX experience, 2 days of travel, all 7 days of crazy fun. There were small bits of drama but overall I had a kickass time. Could have been better if I knew more and were more prepared, but hey you’re always learning something new, hopefully. Too bad we never met the elusive and legendary WhiteMage in person. Would I go to AX again? Yes, I would. Can I go to AX again? Most likely not… but we’ll see. Maybe something magical will turn up to change my situation.

So, I know like one person from #beastslair reads this. I think I shall explain my anger rampage I went on last night on the channel. First of all I wasn’t angry at all, actually I was laughing about half the time. Asshole move? Yeah probably. You can ask Demonblooded or Blargkkake about this.

Why did I do it? My good friend wrote a fantastic entry about this… basically, it’s all about how words are worthless. They’re worth nothing until you put in the action behind them. I’ve come to terms with being able speak pretty talk (read: kiss ass). Heck… read the excerpt at the bottom of this post.

What really caught me by surprise was having someone who I considered a friend do this to me. Walk the walk and not talk the talk. Let me explain, for starters I originally decided to go to AX on the main fact that I get to see a bunch of people from #beastslair. Call me weird but I like meeting people in person because I get to know them beyond their shielded internet personality, and often they’re usually really interesting people. Suika, Crystal, Db, Banquo, Blarg, and RK were all really interesting people to meet, talk, and hang out with. Now, WhiteMage. The legendary and elusive whitemage. I can’t quite remember how this whole situation unfolded, and I for sure had some fault in it, but…. so basically we pulled off a lot of shit to try and find these two, RK and WM. We made signs, which actually got us in trouble, ran around for miles for no results, all kinds of pointless shit that resulted in nothing. That sort of just caused us short term anger. Eventually RK came out to find us, which was way awesome. But for the entire 5 days at AX, every day we didn’t see WM we figured out a different plan and had hopes for tomorrow, up till the last day where we just stopped caring. Db brought a tank too! Oh well.

Actually overall I shouldn’t say I’m angry, just, disappointed. I had a lot of trust in WM to actually stay true to her word and meet with us. But in the end those calls and messages on IRC were just fancy-pants words. Well it sucks, I can’t put it in any better words but for those there who ran around with me and had to deal with my numerous phone calls I’m sure you guys have an idea.

So what does this have to do in relation to last night? I’m following what my friend does. Words are nothing, thus I will say whatever I want; it can be the most random crazy shit ever. It will make people go WTF or something along those lines, whatever. Most of you people met me in real life, and you know what kind of person I am. I do not go out of my way to act differently in front of different people, my manners may change but overall I will always act the same.

Hopefully people will see that my words, as crazy as they are, are pretty much nothing until I actually get up out of my chair and actually walk the walk after talking the talk.

Note: I’ll also add that rainrir never ceases to try and one-up people, and sen isn’t getting any points with WM by trying to obtain the moral high ground.

“Words have no meaning to me. Anyone can smile and say how do you do, do something. If you help someone you are telling someone that they are valued to you, and you are willing to go out of your way to help them. No one sees that, because there are no fluffy words associated with action, there is only work, work is hard and difficult and so we want to forget it. It’s kind of a package deal really, you forget the hard times, and all of the people who took actions to help you. What do you remember? The nice words someone has for you while you are feeling good already. You remember your joy, and look what’s come along to visit, fluffy action less words!!! Yeah!” Quoted from my friend, Christian.

Anyways I’ll type up an AX ‘08 breakdown, eventually.

Well, here I am, sitting in Crystal’s friend’s house, at the end of day 4 of Anime Expo 2008. So where to start…

There are a ton of people that I need to thank for making AX ‘08 an overall enjoyable experience. First and foremost I want to thank Crystal for all the help she’s given to us. First she hooked us up with getting us a place to stay for the first and last day of our trip at her friend’s place. Second, she got us through pre-reg waaaay fast, saving us like 2 hours of boredom. Then she got us tickets to all the events we wanted to go to, and they were awesome tickets as well, like 4th or 5th row every time. There were other countless thing she did as well. So many thanks goes out to Crystal. Also thanks to Suika for all the other shit he helped me out with, like getting connections to a hotel and dealing with all that crazy garbage that ensued. Also for just showing me around and stuff and for being an overall cool guy to hang out with. Thanks goes out to blarg for hooking me up with an H-doujin, lol. Also we ended up helping out the guys at the Hen Da Ne booth (all H doujin and misc related booth) and carried like, literally a ton of H-stuff to the parking lot and into their cars. We filled one van, one SUV, and one family sedan with stuff… We also got paid $10 for it, and hopefully earned some connections into the H-industry. Cool…. Speaking of which thanks to Hen Da Ne for giving us stuff; although we did move a shit ton of stuff for $10 and a doujin, lol…

Thanks to Banquo and Demonblooded. We all kinda stuck together and helped each other out when needed. Two military guys, both hilarious, both fun to hang out with. I’d room with them again for next years AX if they do find time, money, and a reason to come back to AX next year.

Also need to thank Jon “Imasock” for getting me into the hotel room, as well as Michael for paying that huge initial cost for the hotel. Thanks to his two other friends for being awesome roommates (as well as Jon and Michael). I forgot you guy’s names, sorry, but I’m just bad with names.

Major thanks to RoyalKnight for actually coming out to find us and actually meeting us. RoyalKnight is a way cool person in real life.

Lastly, thanks to Crystal’s friend, Jasper, and his family, for letting us crash at their house for 2 days. They had to put up with our noisy chatter through the night, hah. Sorry about that.

No thanks goes out to two different tards who happened to hit my car. My 2-way pager told me and it was no false alarm because the weather was sunny as hell with no chance of rain. First one you were lucky because I was a good 1/4th mile away and inside a building. 2nd person, lucky you walked away fast when I opened the door, stared you down, and brandishing my knife. Somehow that first alarm chirp didn’t warn you away, so I had to help drive this point into your brain.

Also no thanks to WhiteMage. For many reasons.

For those from IRC thinking I was angry today, yesterday, last night, before, whatever. I’m just jocking you beezies. You can ask Db or Blarg about this.

Well not really, for the past two days while moving into my new place we’ve had no internet. Well, I’m at work right now and supposedly the internet should be installed today. Hopefully it is and I can go home and waste the rest of my night reading useless things on the internet.

Anyways its summer right? Time to write down a list of projects and see what I can knock off the list.