PIC: Mace Windu costume!

Happy Halloween everybody!!

Here're some pics of myself in the costume that I've been bragging about. And yes, I made it myself with some help from mom for working out the patterns from photographic reference (couldn't have done it without her).

The first pic is "raw" and undoctored: Starfish took it using my crappy camera-phone.

The second is processed with my trusty PaintShopPro and taken myself at home... No, I don't "draw" with PSP - only colour-tuning contrast adjustments.

It had been a fairly quiet day at work. Nobody seemed particularly festive given the fact that management had decided NOT to hold an official Halloween function this year (there are business-related reasons I'm not allowed to talk about). I did however get to join UG and Starfish's team-lunch, etc... they said they wouldn't let remote decisions from higher-ups prevent them from having fun on Halloween.
...I couldn't agree more.

The costume itself turned out to be a big hit, actually and even the Division's director came by to check it out. Even after a full day when I took it off people were still dropping by my office to hoping to see me (to which I asked: "where the hell were you all morning when I was walking around?").

PIC: Kasumi even smaller

After promising myself to stop spending petty cash on little tiny things so that I may budget for bigger ticket doodads like these:


I end up picking up something like this...

Oh well - she was only 5 bucks.

life in the slow lane

Well, really I don't have all that much to report as of late.

FusionAce's contact revoked the parking permit on-site so at the moment I'm taking up a visitor's spot for the afternoon (the sign says 90 minutes; I doubt they'll care if I go over by about 5 minutes).

Because of this we'll be doing the 15-minute thing every morning from now on starting, you guessed it, on Halloween. Which is something I hadn't planned on but have managed to work around. My Jedi gi costume is pretty much done and tho I'll need to lug a pair of spray-painted rubber boots in a backpack on Monday, I've already left my lightsaber prop here.

Go figure, after going to the trouble of cleaning out my cubicle's cabinet in order to make room to hide it for the weekend (not that I'm afraid of theft - I've left other stuff here before), I discover that, silly me, I've left the key to lock it up at home in my other pants. ~_~;

Weekend looks dull, but I hope it's at least sunny (if not warm). It's been a while that I've been able to enjoy myself around town without thinking about "Oh I need to pick up this or that."

no news is sometimes just that

I've changed my mind: no news is not necessarily good news - most times it just sucks.

Called that shop. Made sure that my order was indeed not left in limbo. But still no joy on the shipment... Maybe it'll arrive during the day this after, maybe not.

I'm going on my second week without a cover on my current PC.... Ack. what an ugly thing.

Mayhaps I should pick up one of those little ionizer air-purifiers.

Minor Crisis of Faith?

Sometimes no news is good news.

At other times I ask myself if anybody out there (besides 2 or 3 visitors) cares what my Ben-Ohki persona is up to. There was a time when I deeply believed in the warning: "You fear having nothing to say ...and no way to say it." Well, the second half is a non-issue now with blogs at our disposal. The first half is a constant.

Anyway, I guess the point is I have nothing to report (and even less people to give a sh*t). FusionAce certainly doesn't seem to care one way or the other.

It's a slow week I suppose. The biggest news being that I successfully converted my first AVI2DVD job last night (took about 12 hour and that's including the "freeze" when it was waiting for me to click OK at the end - I supposed it should've finished some time in the middle of the night). The movie, in case anybody's wondering, is a Kamen Rider feature-length film I downloaded last year. I liked it enough to want a version I could enjoy in the comfort of my living room and not on a tiny 17 inch screen.

There was actually a second film I wanted to do in the batch, but turned out that I couldn't find the DVD-R archived I kept it on... so I figured I may as well head over to the usual bit-torrent sites to find it again.

Haven't heard from the local shop since I ordered my new case. I'm told by friends that this store in particular demands a $10 deposit on requests. Which is weird to me because I've placed orders before without having to do that. Huh... I had joked at the time that maybe it's because babou is white and I'm Chinese.... but I sincerely hope the store owner is not playing the race card - that's just low-class on his part.
I called yesterday but they just said the case wasn't in. I didn't however mention that I never received any order number or any contact from them since I clicked "submit" on their web-form. Maybe I should've clued them into the fact that it's as if my order had just slipped through the cracks for a week. ~_~;
I'll call them again today...

I guessed right: new goodie at home

This is the new "Launch Arm" display-stand I found in my super's office today.
The plane is an older die-cast piece my aunt sent me 4 years or so ago. I'm deciding where to put this. As you can tell from previous posts, my display cabinet is getting fairly crowded...
Secondly, although the VF-19A (a fictional transforming jet, if you haven't figured that out yet) looks best as a jet (this toy rendition looks ass as a robot), I'm not too big on the way it appears on the launch arm. This one is in 1/72 scale and actually looks a little ridiculous.

The launch arm is inspired by a key scene at the beginning of Macross "Love; Do you Remember?" - a squadron of fighters are seen taking off from the carrier. But since this is sci-fi, they don't launch from a runway, but are released into space by way of a giant mechinal arm.

A few more pics below of me trying out a different scale fighter... This one's a classic VF-1 in Low-Visibility colours (it's actually a limited edition also sent to me by my aunt). It carries set of additional armaments I added on later.

Above: I'm not too thrilled with the way it looks in its intermediate hover mode... kinda looks like it's being caught by its crotch (ouch!). Below: much better. Those holding clamps look somewhat convincing (in truth, there's actually toy-magic going on; the very same "crotch" adapter is being used to hold it up).

big decisions for minor details

Okay, not really big decisions to make... just annoying choices.

Like if I check my messages, this afternoon, will I hear from the local shop about that case I ordered? And if, so when to pick it up?

If I've timed everything correctly, my latest Toy-Wave order should be arriving today... means I need to head home to catch the admin office before the super closes up for the evening. (I'll blog about what I ordered later; it's kind of a long story behind it).

Mmm... need to stop by Toys R Us on the way home tomorrow night. The big hooplah on the Red Flag Deals message boards is that there's been yet another f*ck up on pricing. The latest edition of Burn-Out was priced at an astounding $15. There're a couple of legit sales I want to check out but I'll also try my luck for that one. If I had any common sense, I should've check this out sooner.

...and on another weird note...
I guess my mother's being a busy-body. I had sent over some reference pictures of Mace Windu for that Halloween costume I was planning. I asked her to take a look to help me work out a pattern. Little did I realize that she's already started working on it. Sent me some photos last night of dad modelling the new Jedi robe (looks almost complete, actually). Told her so: she's finding retirement boring! ^_^;

PC: Aspire X-Plorer in blue!

Taking a break from all that overemotional and physical soreness from the FusionAce side, I just wanted to briefly post that all is well now that I got my retroactive salary hike... 3 years behind schedule. Nice cheque!!

And here's the first major goody I've decided to splurge on:
Aspire USA: Blue X-plorer Case

Placed my order at the usual local place today... I'm guessing they'll get it in by this weekend. Oooh - Aaaah. ^_^;

I can't wait. This'll really mark the first time I bought an upgrade that was wholly unecessary. I know, I said that about the bus cables but the fact is they're useful in that it keeps the interior nice and neat to have the cables bound up in a round shape. But a case? I've never bought one of these before for the hell of it. This'll be fun!

Pics: new on the shelves

A couple of new cuties from Ghost in the Shell.


Yeah, I've shown you these before but direct your attention to the tiny little Mazinger Z in the front. He's a "Trading Figure" in that he's from a set of blind-packaged figures where you don't know which you get until you open the box. Lady luck was with me that day: I got my favourite character after buying only one box. Sweet!


The new 1/48-scale transforming jet toy I paid about $300 for last week. Yeesh...



An up-close shot of one of my newest Ghost in the Shell figures.



Yes I've had Kasumi for a while, but those two tiny trading figures are a novelty in that I actually did get them out of novelty capsule machines. That was fun in itself. ^o^



The man, Sam Jackson, doing his Jedi thing, immortalized in PVC plastics... 1/12 actual size.

Pics: photos from all over

A mix of pics from my recently purchased camera phone and my older digital cam... You'll have to guess which came from where.


Candid shot of my brother caught singing out-loud. I know, it's bad to be distracting the driver but it's not like I surprised him or anything...


Who's that devlishly handsome fellow? babou was fooling and snapped a candid shot of me.


Ah, here it is now. The dangly thingie is from Hong Kong - I'm representin' ^_^; And in this pic you can see what I was talking about regarding the wallpaper matching the printed image on the front...


Between Kingston and Toronto is a tourist trap near Colbourne that does nothing but sell you a freshly made apple pie. But damn it's good pie. Weather was ugly and we didn't feel like stopping this year. I've always wanted a photo of their giant "Big Apple" prop...


Pocky is a popular candy-coated cookie snack from Japan. This is a newer "reverse pocky" brand by the same company with the cookie around the creamy centre. Vanilla. Mmmm. ^_^;


The new 200Gb Western Digital I installed last night.


The new blue mouse and keyboard by Aspire from TigerDirect.ca - sweet. Too bad I blew my mod case budget on replacing that damned hard-drive. Oh well, I'll live. ~_~;


A-ha! The infamous MP3 deck that wouldn't fit. Well I made it fit. Awefully proud of my handy work.

PC: 200Gb minus 40Gb

So I have a new item to list under my personal "Greatest Hits." Put in the new harddrive last night (still fuming over how short the lifespan of my previous drive was - only 3 or 4 years). But the net gain of 160Gb is a nice trade off for my troubles.
Anyway, went into the BIOS and set myself up to boot from my Windows system CD. About an hour later after the setup routine formatted the huge new drive, it prompted me for a CD key. Never one to play by the rules, I obtained this OS from a friend of a friend so no - I don't have a key. Mm... scratch that, I do have a key... in a txt file... on the CD. Oops.
Called babou and had him read his key to me (yeah, we have the same friend of a friend).Was able to recover most of my archives from the old drive. Still can't format it though. I'm pretty sure it's scrap. Maybe in the far flung future...?
Luckily, all my setup files were intact so I was up and running by the end of the evening. I even had time to give the new Nokia USB cable a quick test (was able to extract a photo off my phone).

PS: look for a photo post later tonight when I have time to organize and do some colour touch-ups.

PC: 11-month expiration-date

Seems like my reprieve is over. Fusionace went home last night ready to do a bit more blogging about the Legion's family reunion in Toronto and ZeroPrime wouldn't boot up. *sigh* Luckily (depending on one's view of things) I had on hand a bootable Windows CD left for me from last year when I spent an entire week holed up in babou's basement fixing the damn thing (bless mommybabou for putting up with my constant overbearingness).

As it turned out, the WinXP CD detected my previous install and started a CHKDSK routine but froze up about half-way through. Said the drive was corrupt and couldn't repair the installation. Looks like babou and I will go shopping again this week. And I was just shy of a year since that last time I rebuilt the master boot record on the drive. ^_^;

On a side note, I thought I should point out the user comment in my last post. It's spam (there's like 3 ads for stuff in the comment itself) but it certainly look pretty good for spam. Grammer and vocabulary is spotless compared to most. Story is kind of a tear-jerker... I give it 4 stars out of a possible 5. Maybe I'll even actually read the "family web site" some time.

Oh and, while off line last night, went around the apartment taking pics of the goodies I had amassed during my Toronto trip. Then realized I wouldn't have a PC to upload the photos to. Oops. Colour me stupid. ~_~;;;
Just wait for it, I'm sure I'll be up and running in the next couple of days...

List: Things hanging over me

1) my impending oil change. Some time in the next couple of weeks. In theory I'm due for a tune-up too but last year I delayed my manufacturer-recommended tune-up by about 8000km so as far as I know, I can delay this year's too until spring time. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to get my oil done at the nearby Oil-Changers instead of paying through the nose at the dealer's...

2) Still waiting for that Nokia USB cable I won on ebay the week before last. This is getting irritating.

3) Now waiting for a minor accessory for my 1/48 scale VF-1 model plane. It's a launch catapult... that doubles as a display stand. Neat! Hmm... let's home Ken's up to his usual speed. If I'm lucky it'll arrive by next week.

4) Still thinking about my root canal and dental plan. One of my co-worker buddies just told me to expect the bill to be about $900CAD... I'm pretty sure my dental plan will cover that plus the consultations and other cleaning stuff I need taken care of. But if I need a second root canal treatment for the other serious cavity the dentist identified the previous week, I'll need to work with the scheduling so that I can claim the cost off my 2006 coverage...

5) The next Running Room clinic for "Learn to Run" is starting up next week. Need a new pair of running shoes. I know - I mentioned shoes only a few months ago but as luck would have it, at the time I decided to "grow" and wear casual shoes day to day instead of runners like I have all my life. Problem now is that I never did get fitted for a decent pair of exercise footwear. That'll cost a pretty penny, I think. The clinic itself is only about $70CAD. Not too bad.

6) October is quickly approaching mid-month. And I still haven't even bought material for my Mace Windu jacket/vest. Hopefully during the week I'll be able to find something suitable. (You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to find plain unpatterned cloth in a monochrome colour like beige). I've already sent reference photos to my mom so maybe she can draw up some preliminary patterns for me to work with over the weekend... Maybe. And wear will I find regular brown boots? No buckles. Just plain ones... like motorcycle boots. Hmm...

clearly it's trying to communicate!

Here's a wacky incident you don't get every day.

So I arrive back in town yesterday afternoon from a trip to Toronto for the long weekend. We'd taken my brother's car so coming home to my own car was a little weird to be behind my own wheel again. Okay, the engine's a little cold and if you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know that my coolant light has been acting a little wonky for the last year or so (yes, the coolant is just fine, I check the reservoir again last night to be sure). Anyway, it was lit up last night.

I pull up to a red light behind this scooter-bike with two people on it. The passenger stumbles a little like he was about fall off. The driver has his head turned and appears to be talking to him when I catch his eye. Now here's the weird thing: I haven't a clue why I caught his eye.

He was desperately trying to communicate with me though. He'd point at himself, then to me, then thumb left or point right. I made a "shrug my shoulders, I don't understand what you're saying" gesture through my windshield for him. I thought that'd be the end of it but he kept right on pointing left and right like he really needed to know something. I thought he wanted to know which direction I was headed in (although, I kinda figured that was a weird question to want to know about a complete stranger) so I lit up my turn signals for the hell of it. And he kept on pointing left and right.... right up until the lit turned green and we were forced by traffic behind us to get moving.

I didn't pass him because at the time my coolant light started blinking, indicating malfunction and I pulled over onto a side street. He seemed to want to follow me by making an unecessary lane change but then seemed to change his mind and continued straight.

I pulled over and thought about all the things that perhaps someone outside may have observed about my car... Well my headlights were on okay. I popped the hood and although I thought I smelled the skunk from last week there wasn't any smoke or anything. And my wipers were okay. I even tested my turn signals. Nope. And yes again, the coolant level was okay. I really couldn't tell if anything was wrong. By the time I got back into my dash board had settled back to normal...

So what the hell did that biker want anyway?

flashback: designer underwear

Just an odd thought that popped into my head...

So I was folding up some laundry last night when I had a sudden flashback to last year's X'mas party. One of the door prizes was a gift-certificate to Sears (I think) for some $50 or so - I don't recall exactly.

Anyway, I had remarked to nobody in particular, "Hmm... should be enough for a couple of pairs of underwear." Actually, at the time I was being funny more than serious because I'm well aware that fifteen bucks can get me like 6 pairs of Hanes. But UG gave me a funny look, surprised that I actually own designer boxers.

"What of it," I replied? "Down there happens to be a very tender part of my body, I like to treat it with some respect," I said with all the righteous indignation I could muster. That sure showed her. ^_^;;;

MP3 player finally "in like Jim"

Well, like I had been looking forward to all month, I finally had the time to be parked in my parents car port within easy reach of a handy tool bench. Oh the things I took for granted living at home. And life in an apartment sucks more than ever before. ^_^;

Anyway, I finally got around to yanking out my deck and harness like so much spaghetti (or rather linguinni as the case may be) and redid all the wiring removing up to 3 or 4 inches of extra wire in some places. Saved me just enough place and even then took some plain old muscle to get my deck to sit right the dash board.

To my dismay when all that was done, I realized that the aftermarket bracket that covered it all up didn't fit the new player (it would snag the motorized flip-face). And once again I say, "Dremel makes the coolest tools in the world." No I'm not getting paid to say that - just that it's been the single most useful powertool I've bought in the last 2 or 3 years.

Well now it's done. My fingers are sore from all that poking and prodding. And my camera phone is somewhere I'm too tired to look for at the moment. But I promise, pictures later.

For the moment I'm just looking forward to a relaxing game of Warhammer 40'000 with my brother tonight (it's a family-affair!). ^.^