Anyway, since then, I’ve started a new job. I work five minutes down the road and continue to contract with my former employer. Our first task was to do a systems migration to my new employer’s network, effectively moving my former employer’s network closer to a demilitarized zone. This project induced a lot of long hours at the last minute of each phase, but it’s complete.

The new job is nicer. The atmosphere is good, and it’s nice to be working for a company that only does software, not a department that does software. Also, I have a window seat and huge white boards at work now, so that’s pretty much awesome.

AnimeIowa was in August, and I had a really good time. I can’t think of any specifics from the convention that were exceptionally great. Maybe it was just good all around. I have yet to post my photos for that.

Similarly, Nebraskon was a fun convention last month. I need to get the photos for that up soon, too. I enjoyed doing some Para Para, listening to what the guests had to say, and just being out of town after a hellish systems migration from one job to the next. I was out of town the Monday after, but the two weeks following were even worse since some things got overlooked during the migratory process.

Work’s kind of slow right now. I have several projects in the works that could all get approved in January. Between now and then, I’m trying to stay as caught up as possible and fill my time. I’m curious what will happen if everything gets approved at the same time. Things could be insane if someone doesn’t manage these projects appropriately (read: different projects get different resources).

Friday morning, we were all up early since we had a room at the loudest intersection in the city. We got ready and moved out to the Hyatt and arrived at about 10:30 a.m. Both parking garages attached to the hotel were already full. That is amazing. We went to the next parking garage down the street and met up with Sandy, Ryan, Allison, Judgy, and Joe. That was all sorts of awesome. Those of us that had badges went ahead and hung out in the dealer’s room first, since it was close. I got some moogle ears and Jess and Allison talked me into a choker with a bell, that apparently went well with the ears. I work them around, and felt stupid with that damned bell, but it was okay.

There was all sorts of random, including lots of trips between the parking garage to the hotel room, eventually. There was a ton of stuff to move from the car, and those trips seriously sucked. I don’t remember what happened in the afternoon on Friday, but I do remember heading to a panel called Artists Alley After Dark, which was all that was going on at the time. Allison eventually joined us as well. There was nothing really going on in the room, because it was more of a hang-out-with-the-artists room. We started talking with some random people in there and eventually started recruiting people into the room by having them touch my electric shocking die and rewarding them with Goldfish. Pretty soon, the mob got large and we took to the streets. This was hilarious, running around in a mob yelling “pick up dice!” Eventually, the die broke and people dispersed. We met a guy named Kevin, who ended up hanging out with us for the rest of the weekend. He was from California, and it sounded like his friend was a super-gamer so he had no one to do anything with. We headed back to the panel room and left from there to go to a yuri panel, because it was going to be funny or something. We ran into a few other clan members from the die fiasco and all went to the yuri panel, which lacked air conditioning.

I missed the Mari Iijima concert on Friday, due to confusion on when to pick up tickets. Apparently, I had to have gotten tickets much earlier than I had thought, so I couldn’t go. I was sad, because it would have been epic to see the original voice of Minmay in concert.

Saturday was fun. We went to a Para Para panel in the morning. These are always fun. The routine was semi-difficult this time, but the teacher was really good. I just think that they needed to explain the last set better than they did. The routine had some ass-slapping, which was super embarrassing. I was surprised at this, but as I was already there went along with it. The worst part was that a few people in our group decided to not participate (for good reasons) and sit in the back and watch. That made it a lot worse, but I still had fun. Sometime during that panel, Kevin called and we met up afterwards when I got the message.

After this, we went to the awesomeness that was the HALCALI concert. This was seriously the highlight of the entire convention. I had so much fun at this thing, it was rediculous. Judgy, Sandy, and Allison came with us too. We were dancing all sorts of crazy in the back. The only downside was that since we ended up in the back, IRT was like right there. It didn’t matter, though. HALCALI put on an awesome show, and we had a blast! I got their CD. I wanted to get it autographed and get a picture, but I didn’t have the time on Saturday, and Sunday it just didn’t work out. They had a booth in the exhibit hall that I could have seen them really quickly at, but I was missing my CD on Saturday when we went by it.

Getting dinner on Saturday involved a bunch of moderation bullshit. This was seriously frustrating to me from all angles. I’m not doing that shit anymore. People can fend for themselves. If I don’t make the decision to get food, I’m not taking an active part in obtaining it. I’ll pay for food if someone asks me to go in as a group for something, but I’m not playing moderator while everyone explains their agendas to me anymore. It just really, really pissed me off. I’m also taking a less active role on coordinating stuff for conventions from now on. I can get myself a room, registered, transported, and food. If someone else wants to see some level of coordination, then can do it themselves. If I’m not playing moderator, I’m getting screwed out of money that I didn’t volunteer to spend or I’m worrying about someone else’s problems. Maybe I won’t disassociate myself as much as I’d like to, but at the least, I can say that I’m seriously bent out of shape about several things here.

Saturday night, we went to a series of panels. The ACen Insanity Panel was kind of funny. Zach got up there to do a Simon Says type of thing. The leader asked them to pretend like they were waiters in a restaurant. Most people were serving food to people. Zach stayed up front and smoked a cigarette. That was hilarious. We also went to the When Fans Go Bad panel, which was pretty funny. Finally, we went to a yaoi panel. Judgy had originally said that was had to go because it was tradition from last year. Of course this was a completely different panel, and it was more of a history lesson. Judgy never showed, and everyone thought that we were there for someone else. Finally, I asked if anyone actually wanted to be there. No one did, so we got the hell out of there. Sorry, yaoi. I don’t remember much after that, but there was Bible Black late night on Saturday. Oh, watching hentai with your sister is hilarious.

Sunday, we did some stuff in the morning, but I have no idea what. It took forever to get everyone packed and put into the car. I’m not sure why, but it did. Eventually, we met up with Kevin, did the “see ya” thing, and left the convention center. We had Mexican food at Laredo’s, and headed out. We got back into town around 8pm. I posted photos, the “pick up dice” video, and crashed.

All in all, Anime Central was awesome. I had a great time this year, and can’t wait to go back.

• READY STEADY GO - by L’Arc~en~Ciel, from Full Metal Alchemist
• Crazy Sunshine - by the pillows, from Fooly Cooly
• kicks! - by MELL
• ht - by Tsuneo Imahori, from Trigun
• Parallel Days - by Aya Hirono, from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
• Super Drive - by Sakanoue Yosuke, from Gravitation
• Splendid Flight - by Seiko Nagaoka, from Stellvia
• Brilliant Road to Tomorrow (TV Size Ver.) - by angela, from Stellvia
• Days - by HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR
• Red fraction - by MELL, from Black Lagoon
• Dive for You - by Boom Boom Satellites, from Appleseed
• HAIL THE NATION - by Lia
• INVOKE - by T.M. Revolution, from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
• Will - by lisa, from The Melody of Oblivion
• Lew Me Be With You (New Step mix) - by ROUND TABLE featuring Nino, from Chobits
• OPEN YOUR MIND ~ Spread the small wings ~ - by Yoko Ishida, from Ah! My Goddess
• Active Heart - by Maaya Sakamoto
• hirari no naka e (Into the Light) - by Maaya Sakamoto, from The Vision of Escaflowne
• Crystal Letter ~Ending Theme~ - by Nana Mizuki, from Wild ARMs The Vth Vanguard

It’s a rather interesting mix of music, but it goes together pretty well. I’m pretty happy with the way that it flows. The beginning of the CD is nothing like the end, but there’s not a huge gap where it one things, “How did this get in here?” At least, there’s not a huge gap where one would think that. I’m sure that someone in the car will feel that way at one point or another. It’s also missing a lot of the more popular anime music that one would expect on a con road trip CD. That’s all been done, and I wanted to do something different. Still, there are some common ones, like the Ah! My Goddess theme and the Chobits theme. Then there’s the completely random, like HAIL THE NATION or kicks!, which have never been featured in anime to my knowledge. I guess HAIL THE NATION is from a MMORPG, RF Online, which I’ve never heard of. I figure that there are other CDs for the Evangelion theme song.

I will most likely either write another entry where I’m all giggle-squeeing about Anime Central or a wrap up entry next week. I’m so excited!

I code so much better at night when no one else is at work. Seriously, getting interrupted sixty million times a day makes it hard to get anything done. The funny thing is that many of the longer interruptions are coming from a “get it done” client. I understand that they want updates, but I really need to stop having thirty minute-plus discussions about things in my office so that I can actually do stuff.

Working all the time has its benefits: I get lots done, and I get excited about what I’m accomplishing. There are also the drawbacks: Constant deadlines. I must fix an XML-parsing bug and then start writing a simple FTP client that can post files and get files based on an XML script.

People can say what they want about .NET, but there is no way that I could accomplish this as fast using another language. While I’m unsure what kind of support the .NET Framework provides for FTP, the speed with which I’ve implemented my config file in self-documenting XML has been amazing. When I go to do the FTP stuff, I will eventually want to make it multi-threaded for response reasons. Once again, the System.Threading API will come to my rescue. I’m not well versed in threading, and I don’t have time to become such right now, so it’s just what the doctor ordered.

I’m rambling, and I should be programming.