And now comes the stupid part, the transition wasn’t exactly smooth. Then again, all things that can fail, will fail, right?

I simultaneously decided to upload the updated theme and update WP to 2.6. You know, the whole “kill two birds with one stone” sort of thing. Well, it looks like this stone hit a bird and hit something else — like an eagle or a grizzly bear or something, and said animal is pissed beyond all repair and is now destroying my website left and right.

So, enjoy perusing this bug-ridden site while I work out some kinks in the background.

Simfiles and all that jazz should be working fine… hey, even the blog works fine, but you weren’t possibly here for the blog, were you?

Status

Archives and tags are broken for the time being.

7:08pm: Well f$&%! The update somehow slaughtered all my categories and tags… this is one badass grizzly bear! Time to say good bye to Ultimate Tag Warrior and using the built-in tag engine now. Wee!

7:20pm: Here goes the long, perilous, but epic journey of re-tagging and re-categorizing all my posts. Awwwww yeah.

11:50pm: Still tagging. Getting random PHP errors behind the scenes, and for some reason the default Uncategorized category no longer has a name. Strange.

lythxl (12:47:41 PM): I bet they’re gonna sell a ****load of gurren lagann gear at AX
kanjiiiii (12:47:57 PM): yeah, i’ll probably be jealous of you by the end of the week
lythxl (12:47:59 PM): OMFG
lythxl (12:48:02 PM): YOKO COSPLAYERS
lythxl (12:48:04 PM): DISGUSTING
kanjiiiii (12:48:15 PM): lolol
kanjiiiii (12:48:25 PM): or you might be jealous that I still have my vision, by the end of this week

By the way, in case you didn’t already notice the slew of pictures near the bottom of the page, you can visit my flickr, which has most of the pictures I took at AX. There’s still some to be cropped and added, but I guarantee you’re not missing out on anything… aside from witnessing my terrible picture-taking skills (or lack thereof).

Aside from my generous buddy, Mike, who was willing to drive me back and forth each day to LA from Cypress (about half an hour’s drive) without having to cough me up gas money, I was pretty grateful for caffeine. Since 80% of each day was spent at the convention center, caffeine was a must to stay awake. With all the things that go on there, I didn’t want to be missing out, even though I just happened to catch a friggin’ cold. Oh, add sore legs to that too, I mean… I made the mistake of playing DDR after having not played for about three weeks, and without stretching my legs. Ouch.

Aside from these calamities, though, I managed to (managed to…) hold my tongue in my cheek as I witnessed much cosplaying there. No surprise, of course, it’s AX. As you know, cosplaying is not my cup of tea, so as a consequence I can’t help but love to hate to make fun of cosplay, especially bad ones. Fortunately there weren’t many bad ones at AX, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t bad cosplaying. Let’s just say I left all the terrible cosplaying out of my camera’s way throughout the four days at AX. Of course, “good and bad” cosplay are all open for interpretation by everyone, but I snapped pictures of what I thought were subpar-ly interesting or just happened to catch my eye. So, cosplayers, please don’t kill me with your deadly plastic weapons and whatnot if you decide to visit my flickr.

Looking back, I think I spent most of those days either in the arcade getting my arse whooped in DDR, reading in the ever-so-quiet manga cafe, or gaming it up in the console room. I’d say those were my most frequented places, unless you count long walks throughout the exhibit hall… I guess that does count too. Unfortunately for me, I made the mistake of not talking to enough random people. It’s one of those places where you can easily, easily, make a friend or two by faking a bump into someone. After all, it’s an anime/games convention, and I like anime and games, and they like anime and games. Hey, let’s all be friends, everyone!

But I didn’t do that, and I kind of regret it… but to hell with it, there’s always next year. I don’t need new friends anyway, especially not someone with long white hair with a ridiculously long sword on his left hand, or some blonde guy with a gigantic oversized, overweighted sword that he easily carries with one hand, or some guy in a mullet wearing a head band chucking random grenades and asking me things like “Otacon, do you believe love can bloom on the battlefield?”! See? I don’t need friends; I’m perfectly normal being alone, all the time, locked up in my room with me and my PC! I’m sane, I tell you!

I guess all the bitching from last year paid off, eh? Nah, I suppose a little pre-registration goes a long way… either that, or a lot of saving up. It still would have been nice if I was able to go last year, but I didn’t so a winner is not me.

You’re probably wondering what I did there, and I can easily say, a LOT…… of walking. Yes, lots of walking. It’s an expo, a convention, a place for strange people alike me come and gather and, well, walk around meeting other strange people like me. It’s pretty awesome.

Despite abusing my legs in the most extreme manner possible aside from amputating them altogether, it was quite the experience. Well not really, it’s just a convention, but I should say it was one helluva convention. It seems more of a social convention than an industry one really. Even though there were a bunch of industry panels, events, and private keynotes, there were way more events that were just there to have fun and socialize.

… not that I have any problem with that, of course.

Being held at the LA Convention Center this year, and with gas prices going higher than ever (and here we were complaining about $3.50 a gallon a few months back), my buddy and I made sure we took advantage of our stay there. Our average time each day at the convention was roughly 16 hours, go BAWLS! Pulling all nighters and camping out like hobos in LACC would’ve been fun, but I need my daily showers and sleep, man.

My log of my experiences at AX can’t really be summed up into one novel-length post, so I’ll write them in several parts throughout the week. This is just a beginning.

PORQUE!!!

For the last three days, our Internet access here at home has been down. I won’t go into details, but no Internet is like, no ice cream in the summer, you know? And where I live at, we must live off ice cream if we want to live in this searing heat. This. Searing. Dry. Non-humid. Heat. That is New Mexico. Take away the civilization part, and then you got something akin to Dune — minus the worms and sandriders of course. Damn, those sandriders are so cool and badass. I want to be just like them.

Like a dog or cat whose lost its way in the dark alleys, I dunno what to do. Maybe I should go kill myself or do a barrel roll or something. Yes, I think I’ll do just that. If I do it enough times, perhaps my Internets will return by itself or something.

Maybe.

Well, there’s always Oblivion, making more stepfiles and music, and piano.

I mean, I am registered as an attendee on their site and everything, but as far as packing up my necessities goes (clothes, laptop, hygienics, mobile WMD’s, etc) … meh. Who needs them, that’s what the day before my flight is for (June 25)!

Fortunately for me, I still have family and old friends in the So Cal area, so hooray for sidestepping expensive hotel stays. Although the trip back and forth from my crash spot to the LA convention center each day will be a bit taxing on the gas… but it sure beats expensive hotel stays.

As far as what I want to do while I’m there… I dunno. I hears you can get free swag and stuff from sponsors and other entities, so that’s a plus-plus. Not going for the cosplaying. I don’t cosplay; I don’t think about me and cosplay; don’t even suspect that I cosplay; don’t even imagine what it would be like if I cosplay; don’t connotate me with cosplay. Oh, and I don’t cosplay. But I do like seeing other good cosplayers though… I just don’t do it myself. Who does that?

Otherwise, I’ll be going for the random-ass concerts and shows and game rooms. Care to say I shall pwn everyone’s faces and their children at games like Smash Brawl, DDR, and Rock Band?!?*

So, I leave the post with this: Anyone else going this year? If so, maybe we should arrange a meet, or place our bets on coincidence that you’ll see me busting a groove on a DDR machine there or something.

* The reality is that I’m not that good at Brawl or Rock Band, so I’ll most likely get my arse handed to me by other Asian folks there. But that don’t mean the games are not fun and enjoyable!