Picked up Dad today, early in the morning. -_- It was a good thing I just stayed up all night and got him, because there was no way I was gonna wake up early to do that. :) The night owl that I am.

It's good that he's back. Nice to have someone in the house I can stand. :) Of course the first thing he came back and started doing was cleaning the house. I didn't leave the house in such a bad shape, I didn't think. :) But he wanted to keep busy and try to stay awake until night time, so he could adjust to the time difference.

Went to work for a bit, just to show people I'm still alive. Johnson is horribly hooked to The Sims Online. Hehe, I can see why, such a lovely game. I must keep away from it like the plague or I will never get any costumes done. :/ Not like I'm getting any head way now... :) I'll try and do some stuff this weekend though.

Yah, I'm a bit hooked. I went to Joanns today and was only gonna get a few things.. but yah, that didn't happen. I got a lot of things. :D Got some fabric, because basically I wanna make Oburi's shorts. I wanted to make the jacket as well, but I couldn't quite find the right pattern for it, and the patterns weren't on sale. Since I'm in no hurry to do it, I'd thought I'd wait. Try to sew the shorts and see how things go. I did buy a lot of fabric that was on sale.

I have to say that this hobbie definately nickel and dimes you to death. :P A $1/yard fabric here, a $2/fabric there, a 99 cent pattern and all of a sudden the bill comes to $50 :O Hehe, well I guess a hobbie isn't fun unless it's expensive. :/

Hell of a way to end off the year huh? :D

Woohoo! I sewed my first thing today! :D It was a pair of pajama pants. It doesn't... quite look righ, but hey, it was my first try. The things I screwed up on were the pockets. I think I sewed them on the wrong side of the fabric. I also messed up the crouch seam, so there are some odd bunches of fabric. But hey, it's my "Hello World" program, just in sewing. :) God I'm such a dork. ;)

Anyway it was a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to improving and making a total costume.

Well that was just annoying. :P This really obnoxious women on this The Doors Forum was linking to one of my Bender reference images. She was using it as an avatar. Her username was The American Poetess. Anyway, all of a sudden I was getting traffic everytime someone was reading her posts. In order to email her to tell her to quit it, I would have had to join the forum, send her a message, etc... and that's assuming she would be nice and not ignore me.

So instead I replaced the image she was linking to. I changed it to a picture of a woman's "womanhood" as she was urinating. :D I changed the link on my bender page of course. But did she get the hint? Nooooo... she came back on the site and changed it to the file I renamed it to! I was literally watching her do it, I saw her go to my Bender images directory, look at the "fixed" image and then the image she was stealing and then I again see a hit from the forum. Jez, can't you get a hint!

So I changed the graphic again, instead this time it was of a woman giving a BJ. The picture was quite funny because this African American woman had bright neon red hair. The previous picture was sorta subdued. Wing was suggesting I find a scat photo, but I was going blind looking for naughty images to replace it with already. X-|

Anyway, I had to swap things one more time before this idiot of a woman got the picture to *stop* direct linking to my graphics. Blah. She seems to be a leech in all things. Her photo under her profile is from a dating web site. Lamer. Anyway, her IP address is... nah, I'm not that mean. ;) She was running Windows 95 on a Compaq computer. If I was really bad I could have crashed her computer a couple of times over. Eh, I guess this is what it means to grow older and act responsibly... ;)

Thanks so much AJ!

AJ was nice and patient enough to give me a sewing lession. After all she did help me pick out a sewing machine, so it only seems proper. ;)

I have to say that it's not as scary or as intimidating as I thought it would be. It's pretty simple actually. Just started with all the varies bits and parts of the machine, as well as threading it and what the hell a bobbin is. :) It's all pretty simple after someone explained it to me.

We then went to Joanns to get some fabric and get some patterns, they had a sale. Picked out a simple pattern for me to start with as well as finding some good patterns that would be perfect for my Grave costume. I'm really looking forward to doing this now! :D

I also borrowed her copy of Battle Royale, I'll see about watching it this weekend. Apparently it's quite... interesting. :) Either that or AJ is a wuss. ;)

Well, being the geek that I am, I went to see Star Trek: Nemesis at the theatre. I have to say I really wanted to like the show... but alas, I was pretty disappointed.

There wasn't as much political intrigue as I was hoping for. A pleasent surprise however, was that Dina Meyer was in it! Yay! I didn't even recognize her until I saw her a few times. She's such a hottie! Even as a Romulan. :D Yes, I'm such a fanboy.

Ok, the story was... OK I guess, but there are a few technical gripes that I have. It's not too much of a spoiler, but skip this paragraph if you don't want to know all the same. Why was it so easy to blow out all of the transporters on the ship? I mean Picard was beamed over, and then, zzzt all of the what? 10+ transporters on the Enterprise shorted out... Oh and the set just looked really cheezy. I mean the computer terminals on Picard's Ready Room looked like LCD screens that you can buy at Fry's. I mean in one scene, you can clearly tell it's an LCD panel with a piece of cardboard covering the back where all the cables and company logo's would be. Eesh, even the computer terminals from the TV series looked better then that. Oh and my biggest gripe of all is that Janeway is an Admiral and Picard is still a Captian? WTFH! Ok, the last one wasn't really a technical gripe, but still...

There were some really good points I have to say. The Data/B-4 thing was actually pretty well done and some of the plot elements were pretty good too. One sort of scary thing throughout the movie was the use of a lot of closeups in the movie. Those closeups just shows how old the actors have gotten. Yah, it's been almost 20 years, but I've never noticed it until Nemesis. <sigh> I must say I am not looking forward to a Voyager movie. Blah I almost threw a fit when I saw Janeway on the screen...

Yah, I'm such a geek. Oh well, I'll probably still get the DVD when it comes out, if nothing else, but for Dina Meyer! :D

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! :)

It was a pretty plain day for me, nothing much, just stayed at home.

A couple of funny things happened though, I was on the cosplay.com chat thing and Irvy got a new cell phone with free long distance. So what better way to waste those free minutes then to call everyone and wish them a Merry Christmas. :) She was cool, talking to her was fun.

Later on that night, I was talking to die-chan and Eurobeat King. Die-chan asked to see some pictures of my costumes and I showed her to my cosplay page. She then goes something like, "Oh my god! You were the shiny guy!" referring to my Zack costume. Hehe, I'm getting infamous with that costume. It happened also when I was at AJ's house warming party. After she introduced me as the guy in shiny silver costume a whole bunch of people when. "Oooooooh!" Eeeks. :)

I made some updates to the site today. Um.. let's see. I added some planned costumes on my Cosplay page. I've added Ohgami Ichiro from Sakura Taisen and Squall Leonhart (SeeD Uniform) from Final Fantasy VIII. Man, my planned costume list is getting so out of hand... :) Hopefully I'll get some of those costumes from the "planned" list to the "current" list. :D

I also made some screen captures of what the SeeD uniform looks like, and put them here.

Funny thing about those SeeD uniforms, it seems there are two of them. One is the dress uniform that Squall wears when he's dancing with Rinoa, but when they go on their first mission, they seem to be wearing a battle uniform. AJ really likes the "battle uniform" but I still like the "dress uniform." Oh well, it's all good. :D

Oh Lionel put up photos from MichiCon. Man, I look so psycho in my photo with Pen Pen. :P

Happy Birthday Michi!

Today was MichiCon. Basically Michi's birthday, but she turned it into a cosplay event. Hehe, it's actually a really fun idea. :D

I was gonna go with my Squall costume. Michi said that she was gonna wear Asuka Langley's Xmas outfit, so I wanted to have a santa cap with my Squall costume to match the theme. :) You can't believe how hard it is to find a freakin' Santa hat. :P I spent a good few hours last night at the mall looking for it. I finally found it at a costume shop next to Joann's. Yah, I'm a dork. :) Of course it turns out that her Asuka costume broke when she was putting it on! :( Doh!! :(

It turns out AJ was able to go after all! Yay, so we decided to carpool together. She went as Kizna.

We got to Japantown and it was sorta hectic, though it was neat meeting everyone. Lionel was there as was Al. It was good seeing everyone again.

I saw Wing briefly at Japantown, but she was on her cell phone and then she disappeared after heading to the video store.

We hung around at the Japan Video store as well as the nearby Japanese CD store. We then went to one of the sushi resturants. The resturant was definatly not prepared to have a part of 20+. :) We basically took up one wing of the place.

Dinner was cool, got to talk to Kari and Chris since we were in a booth. Michi dropped by to chat as well. I also had a sake... which was sort of a bad idea, as you can see in the picture. :) hehe, I really can't hold my sake. :)

After dinner Michi and friends went to Karaoke but me and AJ didn't go so we shopped at the bookstore. I saw two of the three art books for Sakura Taisen. But they didn't have the first one. :( Books 2 and 3 cover the OVA and the movie I think and didn't have any good pictures of Ohgami's battle outfit. So I guess I need the first one which I believe covers the TV series. Oh well.

Anyway, photos are up.

Oh a couple of other site updates. I got a picture from Kenshin Ken on cosplay.com from the Japantown cosplay thing. It's a really funny group picture with me smirking like there's no tomrrow. I don't know what the deal with that is. :P

Also, Lionel was very kind and sent me the pictures he took if me and Wing when we were at the Metreon Festival of Animation! He got a picture of us after winning prizes in the costume competition! Yay!

I also updated my Squall and Zack pages with new pictures that I got from Lionel.

Oh one last thing, the forum thing I talked about a few days before, it wasn't Belgian it was Flemish and DrWilco on the Cosplay.com chat translated it for me, it says,

I'd like to see a full-scale model of that gunsword (Sqall[sic] in ff8) should be very cool.

Ok, I feel much better now. :)

Wow, I had the weirdest dream today. I don't know why, but I was dreaming about Anime-Expo. More like... when I went to check in to the hotel room, they couldn't find my confirmation number. I remember in the dream that I keep searching for it on my Clie, but I couldn't find it. They also didn't think to look up my name until I tell them. I dunno, it was massively weird.

Also when they finally do find my reservation, they don't have any double rooms left and gives me like 4 singles. I stormed off and found, Pheobe, Wing and AJ waiting for me so they can put their stuff in the rooms. We went into an elevator and that's when I woke up. It was such a weird dream...

Ok, put up the photos I took from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie opening. AJ's costumes were just so cool!

Ok, I saw this in my web referrer log, can someone figure out what they heck they are saying about me in this Forum? Scroll down a bit until you see the link that starts with http://www.divideby0.com. It links to a picture of me from Comic Con. I think the language is Belgian...

Cui, a tenent renting a room here, needed a ride to SFO since he was going to Shanghai. He asked me to give him a ride and I did. He's one of the better tenents that we've had in the house. He was also going to meet up with my dad in Shanghai so it was all cool.

Oh speaking of idiot tenents, our other tenent the idiot from hell... is just so annoying. She's cooking things that will stink up the house and not freakin' open a window. She said she didn't know how to open the sliding door to the backyard because it was locked... Um... no... it wasn't, man she's an idiot.

Anyway, back onto happier things, meet up with AJ and her friends. Um... Leonard her brother, Stephanie, Leonard's girl friend, Daanish her roommate and went to get dinner before heading off to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers opening.

Everything was a lot of fun, I drove being the only one with a 4 door car. :) Got to the Coronet Theatre in San Francisco. There we meet up with Wing and Tony. We also saw Nando and Ace, but they sat at the other part of the theatre.

I have to say that the movie was fantastic. I have to say the highlight for me is the castle seige scene, it was just amazing. Ok, no more spoilers. :) It was a very enjoyable three hours. That was about it, took everyone home and got home myself to collapse. :)

Yay, today is sewing machine shopping day. :)

AJ was nice enough to help me shop for one today. Went over with Wing and first had brunch... what most normal people call lunch. ;) Unfortunatly the pancake house AJ had in mind was packed so we went to TGI Friday's instead.

Afterwards we went to a sewing machine store in Cupertino. It was bascially an official Viking sewing machine store, which was fine. They had a good mid-range machine that AJ thought would be good for me.

Though I had to say that the sales people were a little... creepy. I mean it felt like I was at a car dealership. :) The little old lady basically wouldn't let me and AJ talk by ourselves and was sorta hovering over us. She also did the thing where she said that the model we were looking at was the only one left in the store. Anyway, we left to go to Sears to see what they had.

Sears had some machines too, but they didn't seem as good as the one at the sewing machine store. So basically decided to go with the sewing machine store, they had a better warrenty and the machine itself seemed better then the ones at Sears. I think part of it is that I just wanted to make the sales lady wait. :P

We then went to Fabric's R Us since AJ needed more fabric for her Ring Wraith costume for the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie premier. It was funny, one of the attendents there recognized AJ and asked if she needed another 20 yards of fabric... hahahah. I think she only needed 5. ;)

We then headed back to the Viking sewing machine store and got the midrange model. Yay, I have a sewing machine now. :D

Went back to AJ's place where she basically forced me to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It's actually a fantasticlly deep and beautiful movie. The scenery was just... breath taking. Well I didn't get a chance to finish it since AJ's house warming party was starting and I still had an hour to go.

AJ was nice enough to let me borrow the DVD and I just started to enjoy the party. Got to talk to a lot of people and it was a really fun party with lots of food :9. I had a great time. :) Thanks AJ!

Found this picture of me and a Chii cosplayer on The Scramble News Network from Ani-Magic 2002. I really like this picture, it's just so... not related to either Chobits or DOA2. :D

I also borrowed ;) the picture of me and AJ as Zack (from DOA2) and Ten (Batman Beyond). Al took the picture at the Winchester Mystery House on Halloween.

Updated my Zack and Ani-Magic 2002 pages with the photo and credits to the site. :)

Arrrg, I swear to god I'm gonna kill AJ. :P She somehow talked me into doing the SeeD uniform from Final Fantasy VII. Yah, so what I've always wanted to do one, but not for Fanime! I'm so gonna get her back for this. :P

Oh yah, a ton of convention web sites have been updated recently, BayCon and Anime-Expo. Weeee!

I put up some photos I took over Thanksgiving up. Some pictures I took of Pheobe and Kitty. Hehe, I wish I could take credit for some of the artistic, dark/shadow shots, but it was just me trying to get the camera to work in low light. :/

I also have the photos up from LosCon, yay!

Well Steve and Sally headed home, but I was staying for the last day of the con, so I could actually see a couple of the panels and do some shopping in the dealer room. I was gonna drive home that night.

I had brought my Squall costume and gunblade so what the hell, wore it out. :) I got a couple of people who recognized me and asked for pictures. Yay! :) See, sci-fi cons don't mind when anime people dress up, I don't know what the big fuss is with anime conventions with sci-fi people. Oh well. Actually, it was kinda funny, I actually got a lot of conversations going with my costume. One of the nice ladies doing door duty for the dealer room was saying how the brown belts matched nicely with the black pants. She was saying that it was just subtle enough to contrast without blending in completely. Also someone else in the dealer room was asking me about how I made my, still incomplete, gunblade, since he was looking to make a sword himself. That was really cool talking to people like that. :D

Saw Karisu-sama and her entire family there cosplaying of course. :) We talked a bit as I got some pictures. She told me it wasn't a good idea to head back to the Bay Area around 4pm (which I was planning on doing) because of the traffic hell. They were going to go around 7pm or so, something like after dinner. I asked if I could tag along to dinner since I was going to follow their advice. I've been in traffic enough that weekend. :|

I have to say that LosCon is just so, comfortable. I mean I was sitting in the lobby at one point and started talking to one of the authors that had hosted a panel I went to, Tim Powers. It's so laid back and friendly. I'm really thinking about going again next year. :) Weee, another convention on the list.

I met up with Karisu-sama that night. They were at Fry's Electronics shopping for anime... eesh. ;)

We had dinner at a nice Thai resturant. They are just the nicest people ever and their daughters are just so adorable. :) Such a lovely family.

After that it was a long drive back home... got home at about 2am... weeee, <thud>

Woke up with Kitty being next to me. That was cool. I have to say that I should have gotten up and started driving, but I was having too much fun playing with Kitty. :D It's fun having a cat around, I have to say.

But alas, I had to leave and head to Burbank for LosCon and to meet up with Steve and Sally. Unfortunatly, I got stuck in typical LA traffic. A 2 hour drive turned into a 3 and a half hour drive, ugh. :P

When I finally got to LosCon I had missed most of the afternoon's festivities. :( Though after checking in I immediately saw Karisu-sama from the Cosplay.com Forums. Good to see a friendly face! Especially an anime person at a scifi con. Yay!

One nice thing about LosCon is that you can get an evening pass to get in on the Masqurade and some of the other parties and stuff when the sun goes down. It's only $10. So that's what I did, and watched the Masqurade. It was very good actually, but really short compared to an anime convention. Oh before that Steve, Sally and some of their friends went out to dinner. We went to a nice Mexican place that had really good mole. Mmmmm.... :9

After the Masqurade I went to get a lot of pictures and then headed to the room parties. I have to say the parties were so much fun. It's really like a BayCon in it's feel. There was food and good conversation. Actually one of the room parties was a pirate theme. Hehe, the hostess was very nice and it was just a nice relaxed party with some pirate songs and dancing to boot! :D It was great, I was sad to finally head back to my room and sleep. :(

Well Steve and Sally went up to Burbank for LosCon. A really good sci-fi/fantasy convention according to them. :) I would have gone with but I was having lunch and dinner with some friends today and would meet up with them on Saturday.

I'd talked to Betty and we were going to meet up for lunch at a dim sum place near by, but until then I basically sat in front of the TV going though Steve's Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD set, he'd gotten season 4 since the last time I wa there. So I basically vegged until the time came. :)

Katie also came by, partly to do her laundry and to help clean up from yesterday. Oh the water was back on, yay. I was able to shower and stuff and it wasn't leaking. Double yay!

So me and Katie watched some TNG episodes while I was waiting to meet up with Betty.

Lunch with Betty and her brother was really good. Meet up at a really nice dim sum resturant. Again a great meal. :) Betty was doing fine and it was my first time meeting her brother. We all talked about catching up on stuff. Man, I'm eating much too well this week. :>

It was good to see her again, she's driving now which is good to see. Her brother is going to a community college in the area, after his stint at being an exchange high school student in Idaho. Man a Chinese boy in Idaho... scary ain't it? :) He seemed to survive ok. I was hoping to meet Betty's new boyfriend, but he was busy doing a project.

After lunch Betty said that they were going to go shopping. Eek, good luck, it's only the busiest shopping day of the year. :) Hope they found some good deals.

Got back to Steve's house and Katie was doing a 80's movie marathon. I volunteered to do some of the dishes. After all, all I did so far was go to their hous, sleep and eat. Needed to do something useful. She was watching "About Last Night" which is really weird, seeing Rob Lowe so young. It was a really good 80's movie actually. That and I was cleaning some of the silverware and pots and pans.

Katie left after she was done with everything. It was great seeing her again. :) I finished the dishes and watched some more Star Trek, basically killing time until dinner when I was going to see Pheobe for dinner.

First off, I'm like a double dork. One I got lost getting to her parents' house. In my defense, her parents' is very difficult to get to, it was really like a maze of roads with almost identical names. Thinks like Pine Street and Pine Way. :P Who designs streets like that. :P Secondly, I totally forgot my wallet at the house. Pheobe had to pay for dinner, man I'm such a dork. I'm gonna mail her money for dinner when I get back. She says it was ok, but still... <-- big honking dork.

That aside, it was really good to see her again. :D We went to a nice sushi resturant and just talked for a long time, catching up and stuff. It was all very good. I ate quite a lot of sushi compared to Pheobe, because I was hungry. Yah, that Chinese food stereotype. :P And, she was paying. Yah, I'm lame. But anyway, we talked about all sorts of stuff, but it was just good talking to her in person instead of over the phone or on AIM.

Oh yah, since I was gonna see her for X-Mas, I decided to give her an early present. I got her the Hello Kitty Shoulder Massager. ;) Now I think it's a shoulder massager, I don't know what she was thinking it was... ;) She seemed to really think it was a funny gift. :D I have to say though, that thing is strong. I thought it would be like my cell phone or something, but no, it can really massage! I guess Hello Kitty really knows how to make them. :)

Went back to Pheobe's house and I got some pictures with her and the massager. :) It was a fun day all and all.

Got back and started packing, also finishing off the Season 4 DVD set. I felt bad for Kitty, the Steveo's cat. Usually Kitty gets put in the garage overnight, but since I was the only one in the house, I let it roam free. :) It was nice since when I went to bed, Kitty basically curled up against me and we slept together. Awwwww... :) Did I mention I like cats. :)

Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Today was good, I had a lot of fun. I had breakfast, which is pretty rare for me. Steve and Sally had invited their next door neighbors over for breakfast and to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. They were really nice women. They were really cool and funny and offered us access to their bathrooms and showers if nessessary, since the water was still out. :(

Katie came too. It was very good seeing the entire family. :) I also got to see how "normal" people celebrate Thanksgiving, since me and my family usually don't do anything. Our big thing is Chinese New Year.

The parade was interesting, but a lot of the time we were just heckling the really lame bubblegum pop bands that kept lip syncing their "hits." Some of it was cool though, like the snippets from broadway shows and the floats were funny.

I dunno why but I was really tired, and actually took a nap in the afternoon, I guess driving took a lot more out of me then I thought. It was sorta bad because I was on the couch laying down with Katie and Sally wrapping their X-Mas presents and I just dozed off while talking with them. :(

Well I woke up with plenty of time to help move the furniture and stuff for Thanksgiving dinner. The water was still out. :( Well actually the plumber did come and fix things but we had to wait for the PVC glue to dry before they could turn on the water again. I wasn't much help preparing for the dinner, but I did help Steve secure his new wireless access point. :) I'm glad I'm useful in something. Basically helped him lock down his AP with a WEP password and do some minor firewall configurations.

Dinner was fantastic. :9 Sally was a miracle working. She was basically cooking and stuff with a drum of water instead of a running sink. Mmmmm... food. Man I was so full.

Steve's brother and his daughter was there, as was Steve's Mom and Katie. I still don't know why they invited me, but I was quite greatful. It was a very fun night and did I say the food was really good? :9

Oh yah, the water was finally back on. Apparently the first plumber who "fixed" things did it poorly so the pipe would leak water, but at least there was water in the house again. So a second one had to come and fix the first one's mistakes. :( I felt sorta bad for him because he was basically outside fixing the leaky pipe while we were in the house eating. :( They'd offered food and drink to him, but he politely refused.

Yay I'm in San Diego. Steve and Sally invited me to Thanksgiving dinner at their house. It was so nice of them. :) I didn't have any plans so what the heck. :)

I overslept as usual and instead of leaving at around 8 or 9am, I left more like at 3pm. :( I missed the fillet minon that Steve was grilling that night. :( Ugh, I'm such an idiot. To my defense, I was actually packing the night before...

It took me about 10 hours to get from Fremont to SD. Mostly it was traffic getting onto highway 5, after that it was mostly smooth sailing. I have to say that I was mostly listening to eVonne and the audio book Star Trek: Eugenics Wars. It was a wonderful audio book read by Anthony Stewart Head from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a really good story and engaging plot. It kept me glued to the story and even better, it kept me awake. :)

I got to Steve's place at around 1am, and surprisingly he was still awake. He didn't have to wait for me... it turns out, he wasn't. Apparently they were having trouble with their water pipes and he was waiting for a 24 hr plumber to show up. :( Their house had no water at all. Eeek! I got to talk with him a bit and then he went to bed as I took up "waiting for the plumber" duty. I was out around 2am and the plumber still didn't show. :( I was out cold after that.

Some quick site news, I put up some DOA2 pics of Ayane. Ayaka on cosplay.com needed some reference shots from some of her unlocked costumes so she can work on an Ayane costume. So eh, instead of doing homework :/ I went ahead and unlocked all of Ayane's costumes. Some of them are quite... cool. :) I think my favorates are 6 and 8. They just rock.

I'm heading out to San Diego tomorrow. Steve and Sally invited me to their Thanksgiving dinner, what are those two thinking? :) No, seriously, it's really cool. I didn't have plans otherwise since my parentals are still in Shanghai.

Betty also gave me a call, wow I haven't heard from her in ages. She wants to meet up along with Steve and Sally since she's been really busy and haven't had a chance to see them. Eesh, she's in the same city. I have to drive 8+ hours. :P :)

Of course, Steve told me about a con they are going to, LosCon Friday and Saturday. I'll probably go Friday with them but I'll drive back on Saturday. Want to meet up with Pheobe for dinner. It's a 2 hour drive... but oh well. :) Another con to cosplay at! Yay! I'll probably just wear Squall. I don't think people would recognized Johnny. And Zack um.... no, I don't want to embarrass Steve and Sally. :)

Oh yee flipping gods, this is bad. I just had my first cosplay dream... well one that I can remember actually.

It was very weird. I think I was at Comic Con or something. Basically I'm walking around in costume, I don't remember what exactly. I do remember a woman stops me and points that I should be wearing a dance-belt because I was wearing a skin-tight costume. XO No it wasn't Zack. I also remember someone dressed up as Johnny but his blonde pompadour was his real hair! I have no clue what the hell any of that means. :) Anyone do dream analysis? :)

Another weird aspect of my dream was the fact that I was talking to Marsha from Jr high school. I had a bit of a crush on her actually. She was the first girl that in which I did a really stupid thing and wrote a letter to her acting as her "secret admirer." Yes, I was lame then too. Anyway, that blew up in my face and it was quite embarrassing. However, we actually turned out to be pretty good friends after a while. I remember hanging out with her doing homework and working on the school paper. Wow, all of these things flooding back from this weird dream. Anyway, after Jr High I lost track of her. I think she went to Mission High and I went to American. I wonder what she's doing now.

Anyway, back to the dream. We were just talking and she tells me that she's getting married. That's about all I remember about the dream. Hmm... I'm really wondering what's happened to her now.

Back in the real world, after work me, Johnson and Peter went out to dinner, since we're hungry. We got to talking and apparently I've been giving out mixed signals. I seem not to be sending out the correct signals to show women that I'm available. I guess going to Castro with "friends" and going to a gay and lesbian film festival is not a conducive to meeting women. :( But but but... aren't I supposed to be open minded and not be a male chauvinistic pig? :( Oh yah I like "chic flicks" too. I'm hopeless...

Anyway, got some interesting suggestions on what I should be doing... <sigh>. I am such a dork...

Some better news was that after dinner we went to see The Emperor's Club with Kevin Klein. It was such a great movie. Very engaging movie, no special effects or explosions, just a good, deep, insightful movie.

Nov 21, 2002 (Thurs) Well today is the eigoManga anime party/club thingie. It was in San Francisco in Chinatown. AJ invited me to go with her, since she had a couple of free tickets. She went last year and she got the free passes. I was looking forward to it actually. It's been a while since I've gotten into costume and made a fool of myself, so this was the perfect opportunity. :) I think the last time was... Halloween?

Anyway, went to AJ's place to change into my Zack costume, since it was pretty simple. The only hard part was the wig really. AJ wore her school girl outfit. Oh my god, her socks were HUGE. They were literally taller then she was when it was all uncrumpled.

We drove up to SF and picked up Nando. We briefly met at Ani-Magic but I'm pretty sure he didn't remember me. :) Oh well, I didn't even think to mention Ani-Magic until... like, after dropping him off and driving back to Cupertino. It was nice to actually meet him and exchange names and stuff officially though.

So we get there and it was sorta... blah. There wasn't that many people there and almost no one in costume. <sigh> I think at first it was just me and AJ and a couple of the "staff" girls in kimonos. A little later there was a fantastic Alucard from Hellsing there. I think I also saw someone from Pokemon. That was about it. :(

One funny thing that happened, while we were dancing on the tiny dance floor. Oh did I mention that this place was more like a bar the a club? It was kinda small. Anyway, so me and AJ were dancing. Get this, a guy with a huge, high-powered camera is behind me. He was obviously trying to take pictures of AJ, so I start playing interference for AJ. :D Basically standing between the camera and AJ. He starts moving around trying to get a clear shot, so I try to keep between him and AJ. It was quite amusing. Eesh, could he be any more obvious?

I did talk to Grace again, I originally met her at the last Metreon anime thing.

Anyway, I also met Ace officially. Again, I met him briefly at AM. Hehe.

We left sorta early, it was dull. They were going to do some sort of fashion show with anime "inspired" fashions. Oh well. We dropped off Nando and since we were both a bit hungry, we went to IHOP for a midnight snack. It was the same one me, AJ and Tony went to after the Castro Halloween party.

Of course we got massively lost, as I am prone to be. :) Man I am so directionally challenged it's not even funny. We finally get there and had a nice chat about are upcoming convention plans and stuff.

Oh well, I was jonsing for some cosplaying and hanging out with AJ, so this was all good. :>

Well I did the dumbest thing. I finally found the memory stick that I lost. Somehow it fell in the back seat of the Beetle. Arrg, I guess I'll have an extra one. Oh well... man don't know how it fell there.

Well it's official, I'm heading to Katsucon. Heard so many good things about it and there will be a lot of people that I sort of know. Also it'll be my first east coast con. It should be fun. :) I think part of it is I didn't want to wait until May for another anime convention. Hehe. Of course this means I have to hustle to get Grave ready. I sorta wanna do that one at Katsu. We'll see. :|

Speaking of cons, I put the convention schedule up, well the ones that I know I will be going too. Eeeek! What the hell am I thinking? Look to the right under the Site Map for the list. Oh yee flipping gods...

Oh Wing sent me links to another site that had Metreon photos. Take a look. The comment about my Zack costume is quite cool. XD

Here's also a link for more pictures from Ani-Magic. I'm particularly happy with this picture of me and Chii :)

Ok, I should be so sleeping right now, but I just saw that Lionel posted the photos it took at the Metreon Festival of Anime!!! He took some great pictures... man, I still can't believe I got up there on stage as Zack. Take a look at the pictures, they are neat. :)

Well I sorta did a bad thing. At work I have some procmail recipes to filter out my mail, it just makes it easier to sort though during the day.

Well last week, the systems group did some changes to the mail server. For some reason my procmail recipes freaked out with the new changes. The side effects were that somehow procmail sent like... 1.5 gigs of mail to Christyn. XO Oops.

Well so Rich had to manually edit Christyn mail spool to fix things. I felt really bad about that. Since we were all staying at the office late, I asked if people wanted to go to dinner. After Rich fixed her mail we went to a really nice Indian place. The food was good. :9

I was feeling guilty for causing so much trouble, so I treated everyone to dinner. Well the other thing is that it gets me that much closer to getting the $100 thing from my Travelocity credit card. :>

Ok, I don't know what the hell made me wanna do this, but I went out with Rica and Wing today. Well, Rica called and wanted to hang out, which is cool. But man, the both of them together? It's like I'm getting punished for something. :)

Anyway, it was cool. Actually Wing was playing with my phone when I picked her up from the Bart station. So after calling Rica to tell her we were on our way, she called up Pheobe. She talked to her for a bit and it was just funny. When we got to Rica's house and picked her up, we just gave the phone to Rica and had the both of them talk for a bit. X-D It was pretty funny, just two total strangers talking to each other on the phone. :)

We really didn't have any plans and sorta just randomly decided to go to Stoneridge Mall. I hadn't been in a while and it's a pretty good mall. But, I didn't know how to get there. Since Pheobe was on the phone, and she was on the net, we asked her to look it up. After a few minutes with no success Rica called her dad and got the directions. :> Then we were off.

Shopping was pretty good, I got some pants and stuff and walking around and hanging out was cool. I have to admit Stoneridge seems a bit more, upscale then either Valley Fair and definatly more so then New Park Mall. I sorta judge these things by the women in the malls and what they were wearing. >:) It was very fancy and upscale. Eesh, can I saw that word again? :)

Actually, it was sorta funny at Nordstrom, Wing was getting some socks and the attendent was trying to be helpful making sure she got the right size. So the attended asked her, what size socks she wears. Wing just replied "huge." I don't think she's used to sales people actually taking the time to make sure she got the right size of something. I mean they were >really nice about it and making sure she and Rica got the right size and color of the socks that they were purchasing. I mean aftering ringing them up, both sales clerks walked out from behind the counter and handed them their packages. :O You don't see that too often.

Oh, the mall resturant we went to, a French thing called Vie De La France I think. The waitress was just so funny and nice. She recognized Rica previous and just started talking. It was very cool. We were also the last people at the place since the mall closes at 6pm on Sundays.

Oh! How could I forget. I was chatting with Haiyan she was telling me she might do Lucy Liu's head in a jar along with my Bender costume!! Haha. That would be fantastic. :)

I did a lot of costume shopping today, because... well I wanna have a costume ready for a con before the con actually rolls around. :P Hehe.

Let's see, I got the arms and legs for Bender. Basically it's aluminum air ducts that I got at Home Depot. I also got an orange hooded sweat shirt for the Oburi costume. As I was shopping at Orchard Supply Hardware for any tools and dust masks that I needed, I found a cowboy hat that would be perfect for the Grave costume. I also got pretty heavy duty dust masks for when I'll be working with my gunblade and any other things that might involve toxic dust getting blown into the air. XO

After thinking about Grave and looking at more pictures. I'm beginning to think that maybe it won't be such an impossible costume after all. I mean, it won't be easy, but I'm getting the feeling that it'll actually be doable! For a while I just though the Grave costume would be a pipe dream.

Anyway, I think I spent $100 today, did I mention this is an expensive hobby? :) I was also eyeing a shop vacume but I think I'll put that off for a little bit.

As I was wandering around and shopping, I was talking to Wing on the phone, yes my 1000 minutes will finally be used! :) Just looking around Fremont Hub for costume stuff. While I was there, I found a really neat belt clip for my Sony Ericsson T68i phone. Yes I'm such a dork. :)

Oh, as I was shopping for stuff at REI I saw Sandra, Doug and their sons there. Just happen to run into them. Doug is going on a trip for work and needed some supplies. Small town. :)

Oh and I finally bought groceries today! Hehe, it's been a few weeks since I've actually done that. The fridge has been pretty bare as of late with almost no food. I would always go out to buy something to eat, not exactly the most healty thing to do. Oh well that all changed to night, yay!

So I was telling AJ about my shopping trip and she was saying something to the effect that, oh I was going full bore on my costumes. Well... I told her that what's more likely is that I'll have all of the materials for my costumes, but it'll all just sit there until a week before a con and I'll just freak out and do all nighters then. :)

Today was another work day, weee. Just glad to be working actually.

It's also Charlie (my manager's) birthday today! Because, our group has a bit of a problem getting together (we all have such odd schedules), the only time we're actually all in the same place at the same time is Friday. :( So after our staff meeting we basically went out to Costco to get a cake for Charlie. We then had it ready for our weekly company beer bash.

The sorta amusing part was that when the bash rolled around, we wanted to coax Charlie out of his office to present him with the cake. Unfortunatly, he was in a meeting! Doh! We waited for almost half an hour trying to come up with some lame excuse to get him to the break room. Finally, we gave up on a surprise and just put the "Happy Birthday Charlie!" sign up to his window. Of course, him and the person he was meeting with was very intent on looking at the computer screen! Ugh! Finally I sent him an email saying, "Look out your window" and it was either the email or he finally saw the sign that he came out of his office. We took him to the break room where everyone there sang "Happy Birthday" and it was all good. It was a bit harder then I thought it would be however, but oh well. :)

He was a bit surprised that anyone remembered his birthday. I actually had it written down in my Clie from last year. It was a good time. :)

Well that sucks, I just got ripped off on eBay. It's really no fault of eBay's it was just one seller that I was trying to buy Gungrave from. Basically I went back to check the auction and the seller all of a sudden had like 10 negative feedbacks and his eBay account was suspended. I tried to send the seller an email and it bounced. :P Blah, damned Canadians. ;) I knew the price was too good to be true. :P Oh well I'm out $30.

I also finally took my poor Nikon 950 Coolpix digital camera to get it fixed. I dropped it at Metreon and broke the battery cover. So sometimes it doesn't make contact with the batteries to power up the camera. :( I took it to a local repair place in Union City and it's going to cost $188 to get it fixed. Ouch! Well, the other option was to get a new digital camera. There are some decient ones in the $200-$300 range, but the one I want, the Nikon Coolpix 4500 is like $700! :O So yah, I'll pay the $188 to get my camera fixed.

On a happier note, I did get some goodies in the mail today. I got my Sports Night Complete Series DVD Set! Yay! One of my all time favorite shows! I couldn't wait to open it and watch all of the episodes. I basically had a mini-marathon at my house. :)

I also got New Complete Guide to Sewing by Reader's Digest. This was a book that Tristan Citrine recommended when she was talking about sewing for beginners up to intermediate sewers at Ani-Magic. Looking through it is very interesting, my only complaint as a guy is that it's geared toward women. :P The book covers things like making skirts and darts and stuff like that. Well I'll probably find all of that useful, and after all, women's clothing is a much more difficult then men's so it makes sense. I'll see how the book is after I do some reading and not just skim through it.

Since I'm sorta AJ's partner in crime on her BloodRayne costume, I found this magazine called Play that had a really good photo of Rayne from the game. You can see a lot of detail of the materials in her costume. The magazine itself is sorta odd. It's a combination of video game reviews, anime reviews and movie reviews. I'll check the magazine if/when another one comes out. It's a little sexist... most video gaming magazines are... but it's interesting that it's combining so many things together.

I'm also seriously looking into going to Katsucon. I keep hearing very nice things about it and it looks cool. Also, it will be an east coast con and I do wanna do that. I was looking at Travelocity and the plane tickets will be like $350 round trip not including hotel and stuff. Hmm, I'll have to look into it some more.

AJ! I forgive you already!! Eesh. :)

Hehe, out of the blue she yells "SOOOOOORRRRRY" over AIM. Eesh, I didn't even know what the hell she was talking about until she reminded me about Saturday. You nut. :) She basically was really busy and was late getting to SF and she forgot her phone, so she didn't get a chance to call me. It's no big deal. I was really tired that night anyway. AJ, don't worry about it! :)

Anyway, I'm still working. A few people I knew at work got laid off today. :( I'm pretty glad I was spared, I dunno, I was just really paranoid about being laid off for some reason. I mean I've got nothing but praise and I got a pretty good performance review so it's not all that surprising but I just felt something. I'm glad I was wrong.

Well one good piece of news is that Rich helped me pick up a few things today from Orchard Supply Hardware, basically some wood working tools. I got a sabre saw so that I can carve things out of wood and a block plane so basically shave wood. I'm going to be using the plane to finally put in the bevel in my Squall gunblade.

Speaking of AJ, we're talking about her new costume idea, the main character of the game BloodRayne. Ain't that a kick ass outfit! We're basically talking shop about the wrist blades that she has. I can't wait to see the completed costume. :)

Oh, while I was at Osh, I also found the right material for my Bender costume. Found some aluminum conduit for the arms. I also saw air-duct type aluminum conduit for the legs too, but they didn't have any in stock, so I didn't get them yet. I sorta wanna get them together maybe when I get the body too.

I think this is another sign that things are good. I got my Sports Night DVD Set. Yay! It's the complete series. I actually got two of them, I'm giving the second one to Rica when I next see her. I was hoping to surprise her but she found out about the DVD's already. Doh! This will be her early Xmas present. :)

Yay, I found the right shoes for my Oburi costume. It's basically Spalding basket ball shoes that has a black stripe down the middle. What's more, is the fact that it was on sale! It was only $20 with tax. The original price was $55 or something at Big 5 Sporting Goods Store. Yay!

God, I'm turning into such a girl. :P

Not looking forward to tomorrow, that's when we're doing lay off's at work. :/

On that note, Wing is speaking to me again, unfortunatly the news she had to tell me wasn't great. She got laid off at EI. Man that sucks. I'm also wondering wtf that group is going to do with no technical support on hand. Their office will just freakin' fall apart after a few days.

Man, I'm just so silly. I didn't even realize that it was a three-day weekend today. Well sort of, Monday is Veteran's Day, but I don't think we get it off of work.

Anyway, went to Johnson's for game night. Actually, it was pretty fun. Got there sorta late, of course. I actually stayed a lot later then I thought. I got there around 4pm and was planning to leave like 7 or 8. Instead Johnson, Peter, Ollie and I went to dinner around 9. Mmm, sushi. Pretty good place too.

Ack, had to wake up early today. 9am |-O. Went to the Body Klinque to see Midori to get my hair cut. I got my color refreshed. Hehe, yah no more roots! :)

I then went off to go shopping. I needed to get some new clothes and well... I haven't been shopping for a while, and of course, to show off my new haircut. :>

First I came back to the house though, I ah, accidently left all of my laundry in the drier. I then sorta got distracted chatting online and talked to AJ for a bit. We talked about anime and sewing machines. She asked me about Kite so I offered to make her a copy of the movie and drop by that night, since I'd be shopping at Valley Fair she was close by. I also kept bugging her about Witch Hunter Robin which is an anime that I've been really obsessing over recently. She offered to give me some episodes of Hellsing that was fan subbed. Yay!

Man it was packed today at Valley Fair. I didn't realize that it was a long weekend so there were just tons of people there. Of course I was looking costuming stuff :) but the stores were a little to high-class and expensive for me to cut up for a costume. I just ended up getting some exersize pants and then headed off to see AJ.

I dropped by her new house, it's really nice. Really geeky too, they ethernet cable snaking through parts of the house. Hehe. We talked for a bit about costuming and just random stuff. Oh, I love her cats! :) Yay, kitties. I met her housemates and her cousin who flaked out on her Friday night. I didn't get the entire story, but that's ok. :)

As I was heading out, AJ and her cousin Jenny invited me to go clubbing after their dinner with their aunt. AJ said she was going to call when they decided what they were doing.

I also needed to get the save game for Dead or Alive 2. Someone on cosplay.com asked for screen shots for Ayane's various costumes. I thought Lap had all of the costumes unlocked, but when I got there, of course Ayane's costumes weren't all unlocked. Doh! Oh well. It was good though, just hung out for a while talking with Lap and Kim, just catching up. They just got a new car, a Toyota, because Lap's Pontiac just died one morning, so they had to get a new car. It's pretty good, but man, it has eight air bags!

After that I just head home and waited for AJ to call. For some reason she didn't. <sniff> I'm not loved anymore. ;) Hehe, actually I'm sure something came up or AJ just forgot. It's ok actually, for some reason I was just totally bushed that day, probably wouldn't have been much company that night anyway.

Yay, I have a happy! :) AJ was showing her friend pictures from Halloween. He recognized my Zack costume! He said he uses that character all the time! Woohoo. :) A non-anime person who recognized my costume. Tony, you're my new best friend. Hehe.

I also got some of the Halloween pictures that Rich took at work, here they are. The one with me and the Cat in the Hat hat is just... so wrong...

I talked with Pheobe today. I talked with her to see if she wanted to do a Kite cosplay thing. She said yes! Yay! She's going to be Sawa and I'll be Oburi. Yah, I'll look pretty "normal" in my costume but people will probably recognize me when I'm ith Pheebes. Yes, I'm her accessory. :P

Went to lunch today with Lap, Kim and Ed. Haven't seen them in a long time, got a good chance to catch up with everyone. Yes, they are quite amused with my cosplaying. Hehe. Apparently when Ed first saw my picture of Zack he almost fell out of his chair. I may also have scared Lap for the rest of his life. :)

Oh, I've also changed the name of the site. Instead of just "ZigCam" I'm now calling it "Ziggy's Cam and Cosplay" since I have so much cosplay information now. What does it have to do with the domain name... err... absolutly nothing. :)

Nov 2, 2002: I've put up the Halloween photos that I took up online. I'll be getting more soon.

After AJ and Pheobe have been bugging me to put a cosplay page together, I finally did. My cosplay section describes my costumes and collects some of the pictures together. Actually, it looks half way decient. I still need to spell-check and look them over, but at least they are up now.

Oh also the live ZigCam is back up. Finally plugged it back into the network :>

Oct 31, 2002: Happy Halloween! By popular request, I wore Zack for my Halloween costume. Yes, I wore it work and to class. I was... um... quite popular. :) Yah, what the hell was I thinking...

Going to work was fun actually. I got a lot of interesting responses, most of which were a startled reaction upon seeing me. Jim Michell (our director) was even surprised. Unfortunatly, not too many people in the office dressed up. Just me and the system's group. I didn't take pictures, but a co-worker did. Unfortunatly he's saying he'll only release the pictures on an eBay auction. :P I'll try to get it from him next week.

After dropping by at work, I went to my Mandarin class. Thankfully it was in the lab today so I didn't get too much exposure. I thought about walking through the cafeteria, but thought better of it. :) I got an interesting reaction from all of my classmates. I didn't know what the big deal was... ;)

Actually after a little while I started noticing that the lab next too us kept looking over and they were staring at me! Eeek. They came over and took some pictures. It was sorta funny. I got a lot of nice compliments from everyone.

I went back to work and changed, since I had a Java mid-term and I really did't wanna walk into the main computer lab in costume. Also it was getting kind of cold. Brr... I took the mid-term, which was pretty ok, then went off the Winchester Mystery House for a Cosplay.com gathering that Al set up. Well.. the original plan was to hit AJ's house so I could change, but she got delayed and I just changed in the car.

Winchester was ok, met a couple of new people from cosplay.com. Al took a few pictures from various parts of the Winchester garden, but we needed to leave for Castro so we didn't stay all tht long.

After a bit of wandering, and not realizing that the Colma Bart station is only open during rush hours, we headed to Daly City and gook bart into SF. All I can say is... wow. There was tons of people there. It was literally wall to wall people for as far as the eye could see. It was really cool with lots of fantasic costumes. The ones I can remember are Captain Crunch, a really fantasic Borg costume. Um... a couple of penis costumes and this one vagina costume. Hehe.

There was one scary incident in which the crowd just started pushing and I lost total control it basically turned into a wave of people pushing and flowing and basically trying not to fall over and stay together. Thankfully Tony is pretty tall so we can always find him. I was keeping an eye on AJ. After that we basically started to hit a side street and head home.

Hmm... as AJ likes to keep saying, I was pretty popular at Castro. I got a lot of cat calls and random calls toward me. One drag queen was trying to hit on me. There were a group of girls in nurses outfits too. Oh well it's all very flattering. Let's see, I got called a Teletubby, alien, a "what the hell is that" and my favorate was that someone thought I was a olympic speed skater. Hehe.

AJ faired a bit better as she got recognized a lot as Ten from the Royal Flush Gang from Batman Beyond.

On the way back we hit an IHOP using a gasp a phone book! Who would have thunk it? Food was good after all of that walking actually. All in all it was a really fantastic Halloween.

Oct 27, 2002: Wow another weekend another anime/cosplay gathering. When will the madness end!!! :) Seriously it was fun getting together and meeting people and just hang out.

What's more, pictures are up.

Well I saw Wing there and Rosa. She's still massively pissed at me. Rosa came over and talked to me though, she might know the extent of the argument.

It basically started because of the fact that I was feeling really anxious about going to Japan with Wing. I'm very nervous about the fact that I'm going to a country in which I can't read or speak the language. I finally decided that I was going to take Japanese first before going to Japan. I told Wing and well, we haven't talked since.

Oct 20, 2002: Well I spent the day washing the car. Did the whole thing, wash, wax and vacumed the inside. It took forever, this is probably why I only do it once every six months. :)

Oh, I also put a few pics I took from Yaoi Con up.

Oct 19, 2002: I decided to head over to Yaoi Con to see what it was like. It's basically a small, niche con. I did see a lot of familiar faces, which I've been seeing at a lot of cons lately. Got into a good talk with Victoria who I originally met at... AX? Or Comic-Con. Me, Wing, Victoria and two of her friends went out for sushi too.

After seeing things, would I pay to go to the con... probably not. It's really small and really expensive. But that's what you get for holding it in SF I guess. When the next one rolls around, I'll probably just roam the halls. :)

Oct 18, 2002:Well I've been playing with my Ericsson T68i. It's a really good phone. The coverage so far has been fair, about the same as when I'm using the AT&T TDMA network. I do notice that it's a little clearer though there are still occasional signal breakups.

I've already racked up about $12 in data charges. It's to be expected since I just got the phone and started playing around with the wireless internet stuff on the phone... is it worth it? Not really, I'll try doing the wireless email thing and see if that works. If not, I may just cancel the data service. I don't think its even worth the $2/mo plus $0.02/kilobyte charge.

The thing that's pissed me off however, is the fact that they blatantly won't unlock the phone. It's sim-locked to the AT&T network. Blah! That means if I go to China or Taiwan, I can't just throw in a pre-paid sim card and use cheap domestic minutes. I'll have to do the international roaming thing at like $3/min. :P

Well the good news is that there does seem to be a way to break the sim-lock. I found a Unlocking T68i thread with good info on how to break the lock. I hope it works. :)

Oct 16, 2002: I got the Metreon Festival of Animation pictures up. Enjoy.

Oct 11, 2002: Ok I couldn't resist. I went after work to get the new GSM service that was being offered by AT&T Wireless. I got the new 1000 minutes anytime plan and the new Sony Ericsson T68i phone. I've been lusting after that phone for a while now. :)~~~ So far it's been ok, I've been getting about the same coverage I do with my older AT&T phone and I've been playing with all of the data features. I'll probably never touch them again after my "gee whiz" period, but the phone itself seems to be fine. Clear calls and SMS/E-Mail support. We'll see how the network coverage as the GSM subscriber base grows. Hopefully it won't get as bad as Cingular. Ewww.

Oct 13, 2002: Man, I'm such a bag whore. :P Today is the last day of the anime festival at Metreon. Of course I went and look around in the SonyStyle store. I found this fantasic backpack. It's designed to carry laptops and has a ton of pockets. Not only that, but it's padded in the right places to protect a laptop. I had to have it! I think Wing was rolling her eyes the entire time. :D

Oct 12, 2002: Well I'm feeling better. My nose is mostly clear and my throat no longer itches, that's a good sign. Just in time for the costume contest today eh?

Yah today is Metreon's Festival of Anime in San Francisco. They had it last year, it was sorta lame, but hey, when you have that anime/cosplay itch, you gotta scratch. :)

It was actually pretty fun. There weren't too many cosplayers around but a good number. There were some great Sailor Moon costumes actually. They were shiny and cute. :)

Actually I did meet with a lot of people from the Cosplay.com Forums. It was neat seeing them. I also got to talk to Michi for more then 10 seconds this time. I think I only walked by her and took her picture at AM. I was running late and missed the Cosplay.com gathering. Doh! One of these days I'll be able to drive in SF without getting lost.

I must be totally insane at this point for even considering entering the costume contest, with Zack no less. Eeek! Well for the beginning of the day I wandered around as Squall, as you can sorta walk around and not get too many looks. It was funny, at one point I accidently bumped into a group of girls. I appologized of course, and the girl's friend said, "You got bumped by Squall!" Hehe.

Wing went as Urd and that's also what she entered the contest in. After dinner I went and changed into Zack. Well as much as possible in the car, and then did the rest in the Metreon bathroom. Um... I got quite a few looks wandering around and stuff. :)

Anyway it was really cool. I got second place in the male catagory and Wing got 3rd. It was goodness all around. I got some Hamtaro DVD and toys and Wing got some Dragon BallZ stuff.

Of course with all this goodness, I had to do something stupid. I accidently dropped my bag with my Nikon in it! Doh! Thankfully the only thing that was damaged was the battery door. So it still works, with a generous amount of duct tape. :/ I'll have to see about getting it fixed. My poor baby. :(

I should have pictures up soon.

Oct 11, 2002: Ok, I have to admit this made my morning. XO I'm gonna go hide in a corner now and wait for my red face to go away.

Oct 10, 2002: Yay I got my Ani-Magic pictures up. Go look.

Man I'm still sorta coming down from the con. Especially after looking over all of the pictures I took. I met a lot of great people, I'm chatting with a few of them online now. Reminds me of my X-Philes days. Yes... I'm such a dork. :)

Hmm, it's official. I'm sick. No, not in the head, actually sick. :P I must have caught a cold or something when I was in Lancaster. Both Mel and Pheobe are down with something, and Wing had a mild case of it too. Oh well. I'm actually feeling better. My nose is actually clear, dunno how long that will last though.

Oct 6th, 2002: Ugh, Yes, I've been really bad about not updating this. Oh well. I'll try to be better.

Just got back from Ani-Magic It was such a fun con! Someone was saying it was like cosplay camp! It was great.

I had split a room with Wing and Mel, who I met at Anime-Expo. Man she's trusting. :D Only met me once and wasn't worried about splitting a room. She was great and her costumes were just out of this planet. Damn her. :P :)

I hope to have pictures up soon. As usual I took a ton. I also wore my Zack outfit in public! Eeek! What the hell was I thinking? Actually I got a lot of compliments so that was cool. Anyway, I can't being to describe how much fun I had. Hopefully the pictures will show more. :)

Oh one thing that was annoying when I got back. Ants were crawlling all over the trashcan. Why? Well there was a whole raw fish in it. :P Our new tenent decided she wasn't going to cook the fish she had sitting out to defrost and just threw the entire thing in the trash. Ugh... she's such a cluebie. She's my new "bain of my existance" which I bestow on a view select group of people. :P

August 8th, 2002: Yay I finally put up all the photos from the San Diego Comic Con. Go look. Go look now. :)

August 5th, 2002: Ahh, home now, sleep good...

August 4, 2002:Well we didn't go to the convention center again. Steve took us to see Tijuana, Mexico. We went and got lunch at a resturant there. The food was pretty good, then we basically walked around and looked at the shops.

The one annoying thing, at least for me, was that I kept getting mistaken for a Japanese tourist, so these shop owners would be saying things in Japanese to me trying to get my attention and to get me to by something. I guess it was the hair. :)

That night Steve and Sally went to see a Gordan Lightfoot concert and left us alone in the house. Party!!! Actually we basically watched videos while we were waiting for dinner.

The plan was that James and Karla would come pick us up and we'd meet at a resturant. Betty and her boyfriend was supposed to join us too. But that all sorta fell apart as it got late. James got lost, which was understandable as Steve's house is rather difficult to find. Betty had to take her boyfriend to the airport early the next day so she dropped out. Eventually we just went to In and Out, since it was close by and open at 9:30 ish. It was fine, I think everyone got along really well. This is surprising since I rarely have groups of friends, in which I'm the only common point of reference meet up. This is quite encouraging. :)

August 3, 2002:: Well this is the last day I'm planning to be at the Comic Con. There really weren't many panels on Sunday that I wanted to go to. Today was packed there were tons of people here at the con today. It is the busiest day of the con since it's a weekend and everything. There were lots of costumes out. I went with Johnny from DDR again, since I didn't feel like lugging the gunsword around and smacking people as they walked around.

There were a ton of stars that showed up today. Just some off the top of my head are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marina Sirtis, Ben Afleck, Lucy Liu. Hillary Swank. Also I heard that Kelly Hu was in the dealer room, but I didn't get a chance to go see her. :(

Actually, speaking of her, I think she walked by me and smiled when she saw me. But I wasn't sure it was her since she had a hat and sun glasses on when she walked by. Well I can dream can't I? :)

Oh and of course the best part of the day was getting and autograph from Lexa Doig and Laura Bertram. Woohoo! I was just jumping up and down. I also got a great picture of the both of them as well. Unfortunatly the stopped people from getting a picture with the both of them, since the line was moving too slowly. Of course they would do it right as I was going to get a photo. <sigh>.

The most disappointing part of the day was the Masquerade. Blah. The audience were simply evil. I mean, they were heckling kids who were on stage. They were just plain rude. They laughed at people who slipped and fell. They would boo cosplayers who were considered overweight. And when a woman came out in a skimpy outfit, the guys would act like they were at a drunken frat party. Blah, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

Some of the costumers on stage were fantastic. Some were pretty lame I have to say, but none of them deserved the reaction from the crowd that I experienced. I don't think I'll ever go to the Masquerade at the Comic Con again.

August 2, 2002:: It's the second day at Comic Con. I went as Squall today and wow, a lot of people recognized me. Yah!!!

A couple of the highlights have to be the fact that Emma Caulfield of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was here to promote her new movie, Tooth Fairy.

The best thing would have to be seeing Lexa Doig! Woohoo! Here and Laura Bertram where there and they were hilarious! It was a fantastic panel with some funny out takes and scenes from the new season. Those two together were just very funny. Laura inserted little quips here and there through out the Q and A. I also took a ton of pictures. I'm not a fanboy, really I'm not. Lexa also has a really funny laugh. I think I have it on the camera too. :D

Speaking of fanboys, there was one really annoying one. He bugged Wing yesterday and he bugged the both of us today. He was really demanding in the poses he wanted and he was really sexist too. He wanted me "rescue" Urd. If anyone knows anything about Ah! My Goddess no one rescues Urd. So instead I posed as if Squall was low on health and was kneeling and Urd was saving Squall. He was an even bigger idiot in asking me, "Oh you'll let a woman save you?" or something to that effect. Man what an idiot...

One final thing that mades me mad at the entire male gender. So this one person comes up and asks me if it was ok to take a picture of my "girlfriend." Ahh, Wing is not my girlfriend and why didn't he ask her if he could take her picture? I mean, eesh, that has to be the lamest thing I've ever witnessed.

August 1, 2002: This is the first day of Comic Con. It's been a lot of fun so far. Just one quick note since I'm tried and I wanna get some sleep for tomorrow. It'll be a full day. Eeek.

I dressed up as Johnny from Dance Dance Revolution. Unfortunatly it seems that only one person recognized me as that character. :( Everyone else thought I was just a blonde Elvis. Oh well. I still got a lot of attention. XD

One interesting thing. As I was walking by some Asian models selling photos and pin-up calendars, one of them actually waved me over and complimented me on my costume. Her name is Aiko Tanaka. She wanted to take a picture with me and she said she was going to put it on her web site. I think that's pretty neat. :D

Ok to bed with me, with beautiful models dancing in my head. ;)

July 27, 2002: Went out shopping today for costume stuff. Didn't get much, but did get enough to do Squall's gunsword. I'm basically making it out of cardboard and having a metal ruler in the middle for weight and stablity. It's turning out pretty well actually. Much better then my failed hair that I was trying to carve out of foam.

I've been catching up on the show Farscape And I remembered what someone from Hi-Impact was saying about how they would like to see a authentic Scorpius costume. I'm actually thinking of doing Scorpius next year, maybe for BayCon. I did find someone else who's done Scorpius costume it and it looks really good. He said it cost him $400 though. :O

I also have a fantastic idea for a Optimus Prime from The Transformers. One that actually transforms! :D I'm excited, but it's gotta wait until after Comic Con coming up next week. Eek! I'm so not ready.

July 26, 2002: Well I got bored and went ahead and watched Dance of a Dream with Andy Lau and Anita Mui. It was a cute movie and I really enjoyed it. Though the ending was a little confusing if you ask me. Anyway, so that's what the famous Andy Lau looks like. I have to admit Anita Mui is hot. ;)

July 21, 2002: Congratulations Lap! Lap just got married and I was one of the best men with James and Ed. Ugh, I'm exhausted.

Yesterday started at 5am and went on till midnight that night. Ugh... I'm still sore...

July 14th, 2002: Ok, I've finally put all of the photos I took at Anime Expo up online. If I haven't bugged you enough to look at them already, do so NOW. :)

I've put up more videos for the Palm. Of course some CoCo Lee music videos and the trailer for Michelle Yeoh's The Touch. Go get them

July 13, 2002: Hmm, got my haircut and colored. What do you think?

My grandmother, aunt and uncle came by after my haircut and started picking the peaches from the peach tree we have in the backyard. There's a ton. :O Good thing I didn't get much fruit when I was shopping. We then went to a chinese ront for dinner. Mmmm, it was really good.

Yay, cousin it has left the house. Woohoo!

Yay, CoCo did an autograph session in Taiwan. I wanna be there!!!! :( Anyway, here are the pictures.

July 12, 2002: Happy Birthday Ed! Went out to Ed's surprise party today. Here are the pictures. It was cool meeting everyone.

July 11, 2002: Well that sucked! It seems that the program I was using to process the JPEGs I took at Anime Expo makes freakin huge JPEG files. It seems there's a process that "optimizes" JPEGs so that they are smaller. But it's not part of ImageMagik. When I saved one of the thumbnails, it went from 40k to 4k. That's a big difference there.

Thankfully the standard JPEG library that comes with UNIX has a way to recompress the JPEG file so that it's smaller with almost no visual loss in quality. So the Anime Expo photos page should load a lot faster now. Thanks to Wing for pointing this out, I guess it helps to have someone on a modem try these things. :)

July 10, 2002: Well I've whipped up a better Anime-Expo photo gallery. I'm still not quite done yet. I have one more page of pictures to go. Right now I have 3 pages, so take a look.

I have to say there were some magificent costumes.

Yay, Karen is back from Japan. She came by today (and yesterday actually) to plan a dinner. We went to a Thai place in Palo Alto. After dinner we went to a laser tag place to play air hockey. It was actually a lot of fun dispite the fact that I suck. :)

Karen will be going off to business school on the east coast so we won't see much of her anymore. :( Well at least she's not in Japan. :)

July 9th, 2002: Ok, there are just way too many Anime-Expo pictures to sort though. I'm working on it though!! Here's a quick thumbnail of all the pictures I took. And a really early draft of the final page. Enjoy it, while I try and finish this up within a reasonable amount of time.

Well I had to take Dad to SFO this morning. He's flying to Shanghai to be with mom.

I also got a pair of contacts today. They seem to be better then the first pair I got. I'll see how they are in a week since I'm going back for another follow up.

July 8th, 2002: Got back from Anime-Expo. Will put up the pictures I took soon. Assuming I don't just die from lack of sleep. :)

July 1st, 2002: CoCo's latest music videos are such a riot! I loved them so much that I went ahead and registered Kinoma so I could encode the videos and put them on my Clie. Have a look see.

Also in case you didn't know about this before, check out my other CoCo related Palm skins and videos.

There's this great silkskin at Graphic Bliss.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for fishnets. :-D Just look at my Bai Ling rant.

June 30th, 2002: Ok, I was planning on going to the Gay Pride Parade in SF today... but I got lazy and just watched it on TV. :) On the plus side Dad took me to a great Dim Sum place near by, just in Union City. It was very good. Oh well, it's better anyway, eating in a nice AC'd restaurant compared to standing out in the sun and frying. Though there's something to be said about wandering around with half naked lesbians around... ;-)

June 28th, 2002: Ok, my choice in movies just sucks. Me and Wing, Tarik, Nils and a friend of his went to see Shanghai Panic (Wo Men Hai Pa). It was a low budget film from Shanghai. It was sorta ok at first, but it really did drag on and on and on... Also I got a bit sea sick from the Blair Witch like camera work. Oh well.

Tarik took us to a great crepe place in SF after the movie, Frjtz Fries. Mmmmm, they had great crepes, though the tea we ordered sat a little too long. :(

June 26th, 2002: Well today is finals day for me. I first has Mandarin and then Perl. Actually, I'm really sad that the Mandarin class is over. :( It was a great class with lots of fun people. I'm taking it again next quarter, after the summer, but a lot of people aren't taking it. :( On the plus side, I think some of the people from my previous Mandarin class will be there. At least I'll still know people. On the plus side, I can obsess over Rosabelle again. ;)

June 21st, 2002: It was a weird day today, after Mandarin class a bunch of students went to a local dim sum resturant. Of course I got lost even though it was only a couple of blocks away. It seems to be recurring theme this week.

It was pretty cool, lots of laughing and good food.

After lunch as I was driving away, Vanna and Mimi saw that I was driving a bug and started screaming! They yelled for me to stop and both Mimi and Vanna crammed into the drivers side and I drove around a bit. I think the Kim and Lam were a bit worried since Vanna drove them from campus. :D

I was catching another fim in SF today so I left work early, though I did somehow finish my BS of a performance review. Hope Charlie can do something with the crap I gave him. :/

Went to see 3-Second Meloncoly and Sugar Sweet with Wing. They were two short films that were shown together. Eh, they were ok, though Sugar Sweet was much better in production value ans plot IMHO. It was a little funny in that both shorts shared much of the same cast. :)

Afterwards me and Wing went to grab some dinner, sushi of course to continue the theme. We went to Kantaro Sushi again. It's turing into a regular haunt.

June 20th, 2002: Today has been a great day! I can't believe how amazing this birthday has been! It all started out with someone giving me the MP3s of CoCo Lee's new album, D.IS.COCO. Before anyone starts I actually did buy the album on yesasia.com, they just haven't shipped it to me yet. :P It's a great album with fantasic hip-hop and remixes of her older songs. There are a few new ones too. I've been listening to it as much as I can. This of course is 2 in the morning. Also since I ws feeling restless I went ahead and put up some CoCo items I've had on eBay with the proceeds going to support CoCoFans.com. Hopefully it will get some high bids!

After actually getting up and starting the day, it was pretty cool. Going to Mandarin class was a blast. I had already did my presentation and I could just sit back and watch everyone else. They were great! One group dubbed an episode of the Simpsons into Chinese. It was hilarious! Vanna's presentation was very cute with the story of a bear and the moon. I took some pictures since I had the chance.

After class the systems group took me out to lunch. The Thai place was really close to DeAnza but I got lost anyway. :) The food was fantasic, though I did something really stupid. I ordered shrip curry and I took a cucumber and popped it in my mouth. Well, it wasn't a cucumber, it was a chili. Ouch!

After actually getting to the office, I got a few presents on my desk. Randy gave me a gift certificate for BestBuy woohoo shopping time! :) Jeanie got me a Sun t-shirt thats really nice and good quality. Johnson said she was te grandmother of the building hence thats why I usually get clothes from Jeanie. :) They weren't there in person since John had scheduled a off-site, a Giants game in Oakland. I knew well ahead of time about it. I didn't go since I had class, but also I didn't feel like spendng my birthday there. :P

I talked to Charlie, my manager, he told me he wanted to talk to me about my focal. When the time came around I headed to Charlie's office and was stopped by the break room with cake! Silly people stagged it to be a surprise. I thought it was weird that I ran into Tarik, Jordy and Nils at the stairs. Boy, I'm dense. :)

We had cake that Maria mde. It was very yummy. Thet also gave me a card that everybody signed. It was very cool. I guess this is what I get when I let people know it's my birthday. :) The funng thing is that both Rich and Jordy's birthdays were the week before.

After work, Tarik, Jordy, Tom, Nils and Rich went to play Laser Tag, it's been a long time since I've played that. It was a lot of fun. We basically camped out on the upper levels the whole time. I only made 16th, but Jordy somehow was 2nd or 3rd. Eh I was rusty. ;) After that we went and got dinner. I got the catfish. Mmmm. After that there was still more! We went to get some ice cream. The scary thing about that was, on the way, we saw Charlie through a resturant window in what seems like a date. Eeek. That was just freaky.

Anyway that was my birthday n a nutshell. It was great!

June 19th, 2002: Well my Dad took out to dinner tonight. It was sort of a pre-birthday dinner, since I had plans for tomorrow. It was really cool resturant nearby. It was called Chopsticks. They had really good food with large portions and cheap prices. We ordered way too much. :-O We iteraly took five takeout boxes of food home.

June 15, 2002: Yay it's the weekend! What am I doing? Making more CoCo Skins of course... boy I really need a life don't I?

I have foam! I'll need to carve it to the right shape for my Johnny costume.

So, do you need a pair of titanium running shorts? Sure you do. Or a pair of titanium pantyhose...

June 12, 2002: Well, after finding so many cool skins for the Sony Clie NR70V I decided to make a couple of graffiti skins of my own. They're of CoCo of course! :)

June 10, 2002: Awww, look duckies at DeAnza. :)

June 9, 2002: Yes I've finally put up the pictures from BayCon. There was some great costumers there. Here's my little con report and the pictures I took. Enjoy.

Woowoo, I found cheap boots today. My Squall costume is coming together pretty well. Take a look. I still need to get some belts and work on the gunblade. Hopefully everything will be ready before Anime-Expo in July.

June 7, 2002: Hi to everyone coming to see me from CoCoFans.com. CoCoNuts told me about linking to my page. Thanks CoCoNuts! :)

Anyway, I can't wait for D.IS.COCO. Yah, I first thought the title was a little funky, but I sorta like it now. You can say it as "THIS IS COCO" or "DISCO COCO" weird play on words.

May 23, 2002: Ok this is scary, Palm is now selling Palm m100's in those plastic cellophane packages. I guess this is a good thing. It's just very odd to see.

May 22, 2002: Here's some pics of Mayu Kitaki when she performed, briefly, in SF.

May 21, 2002: So this is sort of weird. Yes, I've always been able to speak a little bit of Chinese. I can carry a conversation ok. However, I've never been able to read much until recently, since taking a Mandarin class at DeAnza College. Anyway, ignore that part. :-) So I go to dinner today, to the Coconut Rose, which is this nice Malaysian Resturant in Cupertino. There the waitress spoke Chinese. I don't know why, but I actually ordered in Chinese. Of course I still couldn't read anything on the menu and said that part in English, but the rest of the conversation was in Mandarin. This probably sounds really silly, but I've never been comfortable doing that before. I owe Mrs. Chen big. :> Actually, I already upgraded her laptop, so maybe we're even. 8-D

So if you want to learn Mandarin and in the Cupertino area go to DeAnza and take the classes that Mrs. Chen teach. You won't regret it!

Oh for those who don't know about my insane spending habits. I did it again, I went and got the new Sony Clie NR70V This is the one with the digital camera and it's shiny. :-) I'll have a review up soon.

Here are some other reviews for the Clie.

PDA Buzz

PalmInfoCenter

May 17th, 2002: I just finished upgrading the laptop for my Chinese teacher. I've put up the instructions for how to upgrade a Sony Vaio PCG-F280. It wasn't very hard at all, just needed to be careful with all the small parts.

It wasn't as big a nightmare as fixing my Sony Picturebook which is much smaller.

May 13th, 2002: Weee, we just had an earthquake. It was a pretty small one, though I haven't felt an earthquake in quite a while. It was weird.

There's a news story up at SFGate. It was a 5.2? Wow, didn't feel like it, but of course it was in Gilroy. The tenant was pretty giddy after the earthquake. I could hear my cousin squealing at the other side of the house. Oh well, I guess we all deal with these things differently.

May 11th, 2002: Well met up with Lap, Kim and Ed and Christine today. They did some Mother's Day shopping as I just tagged along being the 3rd wheel (well in this case, 5th wheel) that I am. I'm sorta off the hook since the parnentals are in China right now. Talked a lot about Lap and Kim's upcoming wedding. It sounds like it's coming along really well and we just have to show up and follow directions. We did some shopping and then went to dinner. All and all a good time catching up with everyone.

It looks like I'll have another costume project. I've been watching the anime Orphen and it's a pretty good series and I think I can get the Orphen costume together pretty easily too. Here's a site with some good Orphen screen caps and other goodies.

It looks like I'll be competing with Wing about how detailed the costumes get or the number. So far it looks like Wing will be dumping mucho bucks on one costume and I'll go crazy with multiple cheap ones. So for there's the DDR character and now Orphen. Let's see if I even complete one. :>

May 5th, 2002: Dad called from China. He and Mom are doing ok, they finally got around to actually going outside of Shanghai to do some sight seeing. Though he did tell me that they got into an accident. It seems that they hit a cow. Yes... they hit a cow. Everything is ok though, no one was hurt, well, except the cow. They had to take the train back to Shanghai as the car is getting fixed. The driver was the same one, Mr. Zhang, as the one that drove us around when I was with my parents in Shanghai.

May 4th, 2002: Well just came back from Spider-Man. That was a very well done super hero movie. It was a lot of fun! Hmm, let me if I can list the cameo's I saw. No spoilers of course, just cameos. Um.. Ted Raimi, Stan Lee (but don't blink or you'll miss him), and of course the immortal Bruce Campbell in what I think is the most important role of the movie. ;-) Strangely enough I was told Lucy Lawless was doing a cameo, but I didn't see her she might have been cut out or I blinked and missed her.

May 2nd, 2002: My system is back up. I had some DSL troubles but the tech support at Speakeasy was great! They got me back up without the "Please check your IP settings" speel and he even recommended a possible way to get a faster service! Thank you Jason! And if you hate your current Cable/DSL provider, try Speakeasy. They rock! Almost as much as Bai Ling. ;-)

I also just got S.H.E.'s latest Chinese album. I haven't gotten past the first two songs yet, but I'll get to them eventually. Pretty nice Chinese-Pop and they are from Taiwan.

May 1st, 2002: I went to the San Francisco International Film Festival to see the movie Face. To my surprise, Bai Ling is in the picture! I should read the credits huh? And to my bigger surprise, she was actually there in person!

After the movie, which was pretty good by the way, the director, Bertha Bay-Sa Pan, Bai Ling (Kim) and Kristy Wu (Genie) were there in person to answer questions.

After the Q&A I went up and got autographs from everyone. Woohoo, I got Bai Ling's autograph! :D I've been bouncing (figuratively and literally) all night and bugging the hell out of Wing because I spontaneously say, "I got Bai Ling's autograph!" I'm sure she's glad to get rid of me.

Did I mention Bai Ling is cool? :)

More... if you wanna read more of my gushing.

April 30th, 2002: Posted the Cosplay photos I took at Fanime. Some of them are really cool.