lengeta's Blog

Hmm, April...

2010-04-18T12:44:00.000-06:00

'Bout time I updated a bit. How to Train Your Dragon and Kickass are both awesome movies, watch them both. Trying to get a job at Verisys as a tech, the first "real" job I'll have if I end up getting it. Awesome... sort of. I'm also building a boat, a PDR. It's a lot of work, and I only get to it on occasion, so hopefully I'll get on the ball and get it finished somewhat quickly. Much longboarding must be done this summer, and I'm getting ready to go now, so seeya.

2010-02-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

Yep, still not into the groove of blogging. Someday... someday...

Anyway, I was loving my Zune to death, until about a week ago, when I guess I literally loved it to death:

Hurray for warranties! My Zune's already in the middle of being serviced (nice!), the HDD scanner went out (clicking noises) so it can't read/write anymore. I've always heard Microsoft's support sucks, lot a bad stories about mailing in 360s and now much they cost to ship, but I got to print my own UPS postage-paid from them, so I'm happy about that, it's a free fix with no charge what-so-ever to me.

Back in Utah

2009-09-16T10:23:00.001-06:00

Wow, been a long time since I updated this...

Well, we're all back in Utah again (Dave, Shawn, and me). Cali was awesome, but Fresno summers are way too hot. Coastal living is pretty much a must there. I've just been whittling away for the man, Dave, for the better part of a year now. It's a weird job overall, better that a typical job in some ways, worse in others. It's awesome when there's nothing stressful going on. Now we're way behind after downtime from the move, and there's a convention this weekend. Shirts will have to be next-dayed. Good luck with that Dave. Once things are all caught up, things will be a lot better here.

I've missed the Utah weather, and the Utah peeps. I haven't missed the traffic though, It's like a mini friggin' L.A. here, stupid Lehi highway. Next move (if ever) will have to be Washington. Texas might be cool too, but I've never been there so I don't know.

Wondercon

2009-03-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

It's February

2009-02-07T16:18:00.001-07:00

Not much exciting going on, just a status update. Ok, wait, I lied, something VERY exciting. Dave bought a 52" LCD 1080p HD TV. It is awesome, and has changed my view on movies. Seriously. Being able to see all the movement sort of takes away from the "movie magic." It feels real, and I can see why people pay so much for blu-ray. LOVE this thing.

Other than that, just the same old. Working for Dave, who will be gone almost the entire month due to east-coast cons. I'm about to paint my arcade cabinet, that will be a blast. Kevin's coming to visit, and do Dave's taxes so that will be fun.

Right now I'm trying to upload some videos to Facebook. I'd just use YouTube for the quick, easy upload, but since it's family stuff, I think I want to limit who across the wide world of web can see it to people I pretty much know. We'll see how it goes, and I'll upload them to here as well, assuming Facebook allows remote linking. If not, I'll have to find a way to make a private YouTube, or some other video placimagee.

The Holidays are Over

2009-01-09T05:54:00.000-07:00

Still hate blogging... but want to do it.

I'm trying out some video editing, figure it will make a cooler blog than just text, but it's a lot of work. The quick recap: went to Utah to hang with family and friends for two weeks, Christmas and New Years. Missed a number of friends though, hopefully I can hit 'em up next time. Spirit and Yes Man are very good movies. Back at Cali: Twilight was exactly as bad as I thought it would be, but with a lower budget and production value than I thought. Alice was hot though, mmm mmm.

Now that I'm back, we're a bit bogged with work and have yet to pick up the shovels to dig ourselves out, but that will start tomorrow. Shawn's got some eye infection as well, so that will slow us down.

Bird had his baby today (I mean yesterday, it's... holy... 5am...)!

I kicked ass in my first ever D&D game. It's a really fun game, can't wait for more. Just need to think up a name and personality for my two-blade human ranger. He's really good at cutting goblins up, dodging big attacks, helping the party go where they want (example: back to the goblin band we'd murdered in the forest earlier but forgot to collect their ears), and blowing the Palor cover our Tiamat worshiping cleric (Dave) uses (translation: our "holy man" is actually evil, but we have to hides it from the worlds). Oh, our hometown was burnt to the ground while we were gone, but we weren't that upset until we found out it had also already been raided. I'll forgive Brookwood's goblin destroyers..., with the +1 Duelist one of 'em left behind. Tiamat's a forgiving dragon-god, with the right perspective, and a lot of gold.

December

2008-12-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

So... what have I been up to all month? SharkRobot.

Dave picked up Scott's VGCats merch from ZeStuff—that's what the Vancouver trip was—and with it came Scott's Christmas sells. At the same time, there were about 7 new designs that had to be printed up. With the happenings of the world, none of this got underway until the 7th of December. The first week was spent hanging with Shy-Town and Banana.

Now it's two weeks later, although a month seems to sound like a more accurate description of time. Days literally disappeared, Dave was SWAMPED. Shawn and him had already let me know that things were going to pick up too much for just the two of them, but a lot more was bitten off than could be chewed. Erin, Eric, and me, as well as Tino a tiny bit, all chipped it. As of right now we've gone through over one-thousand orders. A lot of people ended up having to wait, but Dave has some killer customer service and was more than willing to refund anyone who was disappointed or waiting to long, so in the end I feel very few walked away unhappy. But it was crazy, and the house is still chaos from it all. The entire living-room will be left with piles of invoices all over the place since we weren't quite able to finish going through them yesterday.

Oh, and to top it all off, yesterday we receive a citation from the city of Fresno; we're not suppose to be running a business from a residence. The part of that's an issue is that we're actually producing the shirts, not anything else. It's not like there's a store-front here or anything. Nice timing since we're done, but bad timing since we have to blow it off for a week. Honestly, I'm sure we can strike an ordinance for a partial re-zoning with the city, but Dave seems just about as excited about having an actual office/warehouse as he has annoyance for having to move everything and drive somewhere else to make shirts. Not sure what will end up happening on that just yet.

Finally it's time to go home for the holidays. I've only been out here for two months, but I really miss all my family and friends. I've never been this excited to go home before, and it's going to be hard coming back even though I love it out here.

Merry Christmas!

Vancouver Trip

2008-12-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been putting of writing this blog for a bit. I've heard Dave tell the story about a thousand times to different people, and it was a really bad trip for the most part, so I'm kinda sick of it all now. But anyway...

First, you need the pre-story. Dave was buying some merch. Thing is, buying this merch was really complicated. See, this merch belongs to a few different comicers of the nets, and Dave wanted those clients. An opportunity opened up when their current merch seller/distributor decided to up and throw the stuff an another company without tell his clients. This all takes place in Canada, and with the amount sold to the U.S. eating up money from shipping costs, having a U.S. provider makes things... better. Bam, Dave's in, they'll even be making more money than they were working with Dave, but that's only after they sell through their overstock. What I'm saying is, this was a good move for all parties involved. Dave gets new clients, those clients get more money, and the original provider lets go of his warehouse contract and overhead that was eating him up. Good move for all.

Problem though. The original client has already moved the merch from his warehouse to another company. Since Dave was now the owner of said merch, this company didn't want anything to do with it as it's just space and time for them with no benifits. They're not going to spend the time or money to ship it, so Dave has to physically step in. That means traveling to Canada himself to handle the merch. Plan: head up there, count everything and get customs info needed to get it over the border, grab a Budget truck, and get it home. Good plan, especially throwing an evening on there to visit Vancouver, where I've never been.

California is long. I mean REALLY long. Fresno to Vancouver is a long ways, much longer than I realised. No, not 12 hours, more like 18. Horrible, but there's two of us. We took off at 2pm on Sunday, planning on two days making the trip easy. On the second day we stop off outside Portland to have lunch with Emra. Good to see here, and she's doing pretty awesome it seems. She also has good advice for all, we spilled the house-drama on here pretty hard since we'd been talking about it a lot on the trip.

Eventually, we got to Vancouver. First we grabbed a hotel, which was really expensive (ask Dave about Best Western next time you see him for good times -_^ ), then rode the the B-Line bus downtown to hang out with Angela and JJ. I met Angela at APE in SanFran, but I didn't reallly get to hang out with here. Did a little bit more here, but not much. JJ I'd never met, but he's awesome. He was ten days from leaving to Japan for a year on the JET program, something I've always kinda wanted to do but never will. Anyway, it was pretty late and Angela had to get home since she worked in the the morning, so we wandered basically around the whole city on foot with JJ. I think this is my favorite town ever. Then, sleep.

The next day we slept in a bit since we'd been up so late wandering the night before and our legs were pretty beat, plus we weren't in a hurry. We had until 12:30 to get all the merch sorted, but this was nothing since we learned we just needed how many of what brands, much less than we thought we needed for customs. Got it done just it time!

This is where the trip turned around.

Now that the merch was ready to go, we found out that customs needed manufacturer IDs. The original merch owner was suppose to have this all ready the previous day, but didn't get it done. There was no way to get stuff done in time to make the night's boarder cross, so it'd have to wait until the next day. Layne got way more frustrated than he needed to be, and made Dave step in and make some phone-calls. There were good reasons this wasn't done like it was suppose to, turns out companies do NOT give out this information, it's trade secret stuff. But Dave, being the man, had four of the five IDs in under ten minutes taken care of. The last company, Fernsten, were assholes. They were blowing us off, just like they'd been blowing off the original owner. We were going to hang out with Angela and JJ again since we were stuck in their contry for another day, but decided it would be better to get ourselves back across the boarder so we could get home as quickly as possible... trying to get back for Thanksgiving dinner. Then it was Wednesday. Since Fernsten's on the east-coast, we could call them at 6am and get the IDs in time for the 8:30am delivery. Nope. Fernsten; assholes. After hours of an early, frustrating moring, Dave's custom agent called to say Fernsten had finally sent their manufacturer ID. FINNALY, the other companies took two minutes. The merch would make the day's 12:30 delivery, so it'd be on this side, ready to pick up around 4-5. Finally, we can prepare to head home.

Then there's TomTom, and traffic. We didn't realize, but the day before Thanksgiving traffic tends to be HELL. On top of that, TomTom decided to send us to the wrong side of Seattle to get the Budget truck. Looked like we'd make it just it time to grab the merch before the warehouse closed, but Thanksgiving traffic. GAH! Called the warehouse, said we'd be late, and asked if we could talk them into staying open a bit later for us. Turns out one guy out there was an asshole, said now, and the warehouse would be closed for Thanksgiving. Great, me and Dave get to sit around and do nothing for two days. Fantastic. Well, called back to bribe 'em with money, and there was an awesome guy instead. He said it was no problem. Well... got into the town, followed TomTom, and it decided to send us down a tiny forest road we couldn't turn around in. See, we're in a huge Budget truck with a car-towing trailer behind it. No way we can turn around on this teeny road. So, we pull into this house-in-the-boonies place to attempt a turn around, only to find a tiny ditch alongside their dirt driveway. Guy comes out, is annoyed, but very nice and helpful. He helped us pull the car off the trailer, detach the trailer, turn the truck around, and left us to load it back up. It's dark now by the way, and while we were turning everything around, we'd missed a phone-call from the warehouse. We were VERY late. Called back, the guy was pissed saying he's been waiting around for over an hour for us. I told him we were very close, and asked for ten more minutes. He said "ten minutes."

Well, we made it. Finally something going right in the past three days threw the negative vibe and frustration off and things felt good again. The guy was awesome to when he found out we'd come all the way from Fresno and not just from Everet. Took that night and all the next day to make it home. We missed Thanksgiving, but there was a care package from my mom waiting for me, so it's all good.

Bleh, most frustrating, horrible trip I've ever had, even though the actual ride up and back were both extremely good. Now that was long, and I forgot my camera every time there was a good picture to take, so yeah. Done typing for now.

Oh, we also made stockings and put up a Christmas tree. Props to Erin for being on the ball.

sigh

2008-11-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

The search for employment continues...
That's about all that's going on here. We might try to hit the sequoia forest here soon.

I hate to worry anyone (read: Mom), but I have two neat, brand new experiences I feel I should share:

First off, I've officially been harassed by "gang-bangers" for the first time ever. I've delt with bullies to a very small extent, but some people are just ridiculously retarded. We were wandering around a new part of town we hadn't visited yet and picking up an ap at a GameStop. On the way out there were a few guys... I guess you could say 'hitting on' (I use that term loosely, they was all a hootin' 'n hollerin', making asses of themselves) a couple girls heading into a Starbucks. At the same time Tino turned his head to look at what other stores were around we should grab aps for and pointed out a Blockbuster behind us. Those guys were loud, so apparently Tino looked at one of them thinking he was being silly on a cell-phone. Well... that guy didn't like Tino's glance, so he tried to get up in our face. I thought he was yelling at me because I suddenly turned around to look at Blockbuster, but he made it clear it was Tino's face he was wanting to get all up ons. Weird he'd wanna get in the face of the biggest guy... Anyway, his other friends were telling him to knock it off and come on, and Tino was telling him he wasn't looking at him and... yeah, it was retarded, but an interesting experience. He was obviously just wanting to talk shit though, I doubt he would have actually tried anything. Besides, it was in the middle of a public place, so whatever.

The next one? Well... we live pretty close to both a small airport and train tracks, so we hear nosey things pretty often. Last night however, the nosiness didn't pass by like usual. We were all "What the..." and looked out side. It was a police helicopter spotlighting our neighborhood. Crazy weird, and a little scary, but more nerve-racking than scary. We locked the doors and went upstairs to see what was going on. There were several cop cars cruising all over too. They were looking around the neighborhood behind ours, but the chopper did spotlight our neighbors' and our yards too. Pretty neat, even though it probably shouldn't be. I can't find anything on the internet about it, but there was a huge gang bust in south Fresno yesterday. But don't worry about that, all that crazy is way down in the very, very southern end of Fresno and we're at literally the most northern point. Everyone around here is super nice and awesome.

Anyway, fun stories. I'm getting good vibes from Target, but with Christmas this close it's hard to tell what will happen. They are looking for people for sure though, they seem to be doing it a little bit more actively than a lot of other business around here. Got my fingers crossed.

First time in SanFran

2008-11-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

Well... adjusting to Cali is coming slow. I've got all the important parts of town down, but there are things I definitely miss. Right now it's a nice 24-hour Wal-Mart. I now know why people generally don't like the store. The weather is awesome though. Got rain all weekend, but it's not really that cold. Rain's way different, it's weird. Utah it only comes down for a short time, but it comes down hard, and in big drops. Here it almost feels like it's not raining, it's more like a mist.

Went out to San Fransisco. That's basically the last place on the west coast I needed to visit. We were only there a very short time, so I didn't see the city really, but I'm sure we'll be there more often. We were there for APE, which was awesome. It's basically a tiny con, but there were so many good artists rather than just the few that are typically present. The indy scene is definitely pretty sweet. Alex Pardee's art even got outdone in weirdness. Some crazy shit. I also finally met Angelica too (Spike) and finally got my sketchbood signed. Woot! Like I said, we weren't there long so we didn't hang out with her or anything cool, so I suppose I still need to go to Vancouver. Hit two art galleries, Crow at Varnish and the Isotope's award party. Both were way, way chill places, but they were both pretty crazy crowded and we didn't have a hotel for the night yet, so both visits were short. The whole trip was short for what it was, ...weird. Ton a fun though, I can't wait to see more of San Fran.

Other than that, just still job-hunting. It's Halloween weekend, so I feel it was a weird time to be looking, but I should be able to find one still. I've got my fingers crossed though. Oh, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of the greatest shows ever written. Can't wait to watch some more of that.

Ok, I live in Fresno now.

2008-10-21T22:15:00.000-06:00

Finally moved into Fresno. We're still getting everything together and it will be awhile until everything is setup nice, but for the moment it's livable. We tried swimming in the pool today, but it's too cold. Apparently the good temperature is 71.6 or higher but ours is 65. A pool cover or some solar heating coils will get it back up to a bearable temperature, but it's late in the "pool season" regardless. Such a shame, the two waterfalls are beckoning us to dive in.

We are definitely in a nice neighborhood, although we haven't met any of the neighbors yet. One of the houses next door is currently unoccupied, and it's a fence across the street. We're in the very back of a pretty secluded area too, so should be really safe back here and everything, apparently south Fresno is the area to stay away from, but we've yet to explore the majority of the city. Job hunting comes tomorrow, but returning the Budget truck today revealed a lot of places around here are looking for help. Everything seems on the up and up, but I haven't payed my share on hardly anything, so I've yet to see how all this will hit me financially. Doesn't matter though really, I should be more than fine, and I'm living in a house I feel is extremely luxury. I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave. I am already a little homesick though, but I wish everyone I knew was out here, I'm definitely going to enjoy living in Cali.

Starting it up...

2008-10-21T21:46:00.000-06:00

Trying to move from LiveJournal to Blogger, here goes nuffin'.