Well, I went to Anime Iowa again this year, held almost an entire month after the usual date. It was three days of craziness, lack of sleep, and anime overload, but I enjoyed it anyway. Be sure to read my writeup of the whole shebang. I took more pictures this year, thanks to my ability to forsee the future and bring two extra sets of batteries I never had to use.

Well, it took all of sunday, but the pad is finally done. For months, I had the frame just sitting in my basement, because I figured it would take forever to put the arrows together and get it all tested and soldered together. I was right, but the final product is worth my prodigious effort. I took pictures of the whole process, each piece in a step-by-step manner, so I can do a writeup and share the design with everyone who wants to make use of it.

Pick your eyes off of the floor, my site has been slightly revamped. Likely, this isn’t the final version, but it’s a start in the right direction. Thanks to CSS1 and some CSS2, I’ve highly simplified the underlying HTML code for everything you see here. The design still seems a bit simplistic to me, so expect more changes in the future.

I can’t really say why, but sometimes memories confront me. I was once a creature of nostalgia, frittering away many hours thinking about decisions I’ve made, sometimes life itself. Lately though, that once defining characteristic of inner exploration has been absent. Why? Who knows. Truthfully it doesn’t matter. It’s not hours of pointless contemplation I really want - just the truth.

Ah, but what a wonderful weekend it was.

Fresh from the elation that my story had made it to the papers, I’d driven off to see Jen in the wonderful Chicago suburbs. I didn’t realize just how wonderful these suburbs were until Saturday afternoon, when we drove up to Schaumburg for some overdue shenanigans. There, I experienced my first taste of Chipotle, and many grueling hours of zombie killing, and DDR at Gameworks. I found Chipotle a very tasty diversion, and Gameworks an immersive one. We arrived at Gameworks around 7 pm, where we met up with Ryan and crew; we didn’t make it out until after 12:30 am.