For a friend’s birthday,we went back to Los Angeles for the duck Korean BBQ at Sun Ha Jang. They chose this place based on our recommendation, so I’m happy they liked the place. After ward, we headed into downtown to go karaoke for a few more hours. It was a fun time, all in all! It’s only now that I realized this was the first get-together of our Friday night Sci-Fi group since 2006 or so! Man, how did I not catch that?
Though I moved out a few months ago, I still find myself back at the Los Angeles house every so often. Case in point – I was there with my mom today. We were waiting for a representative to show up and measure the garage door. Yep, we’re finally replacing those terrible wooden swing doors for something a little more modern. It doesn’t seem like there are any real issues with upgrading, so the new door should be installed this weekend. Finally, a functional garage!
Mom noticed that my driver-side mirror was turning orange. Turns out that there’s water between the laminate and the glass, and I have no idea how to get it out. Mom initially thought we should replace the whole mirror, but that’s a $90 option which still requires reprinting. We found we could just buy the glass and stick it over the old mirror for just $10.
Unfortunately, I found out the glass isn’t exactly a perfect fit. It’s properly sized for the mirror, but the seal around the mirror is a bit thick, meaning the new mirror doesn’t actually touch the existing glass. Back to the drawing board!
When photographing my latest batch of figures to archive, I tried something a little different with the light box. My photo booth actually folds down into a flat briefcase-like thing. The outer fabric is actually black, and I noticed that this was bleeding through the white back wall when the booth was set up. To counter that, I places some white printer paper in-between, acting as a sort of color buffer, if you will. Aside from that, I played around with my camera’s white balance settings, trying to get truer colors that what I had been capturing before. My camera still tries to make the white photo booth the medium gray calibration color, but I think I’ve managed to tone it down. I’ll keep working on it, of course.
Two of the rear lights on my car burned out a few weeks ago. Since they weren’t any of the turn indicators, I didn’t have the constant hyper-blinking reminding me to change them out. But I finally remembered to change them out today. Unfortunately, those lights are part of the light panel attached to my trunk’s lid. If you’ve seen my car, you would know the light cover is one solid piece that stretches the length of the lid. I was hoping this meant that the light bulbs just twisted out from behind, but I wasn’t so lucky. No, I had to pull the entire panel off and then unswivel the lights from beneath that. It’s not that difficult, but it isn’t very convenient, either. Who wants to pull off a three foot long panel to switch out two half-inch bulbs? The weirdest thing of all, though, was that one of the burned out bulbs had a big crack in the glass. How did that happen?
Though there’s a new Star Trek movie opening in a few weeks, my parents and I went to the theater last Thursday to watch a Star Trek of a different sort. To coincide with the release of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s next Blu-Ray release, certain theaters were showing “The Best of Both Worlds” on the big screen for one night. It was both parts, edited together as a single movie, with remastered special effects. On its own, it would be way under two hours, so the showing was padded out with a behind-the-scenes documentary and a gag reel. A fun night all around!
When the G.I. Joe convention ended, I found myself with another 15 figures to archive. That in itself is a tall order, and I’m slogging my way through my pictures to edit. I’m making progress, but I’m really only a third of the way there. Of course, me being me, I couldn’t make it easy on myself, no! I also took pictures of some more of the vintage figures. I like doing the older figures for a couple of reasons: first, it’s a change of pace from always doing the modern figures, and more importantly, it’s a chance for me to show off what I actually have in my collection. I admit it, there’s some ego involved in this. I think it’s largely because when I started collecting these figures way back in 1998, I never expected I would actually have some of these toys, much less in good enough condition to show off to the world.
One of the convention G.I. Joe figures I bought had two right hands. Of course, since I didn’t open the bag it came in until I got home, I couldn’t replace it right away. I sent an email to the club about the error and they promised to send me a replacement part. And they made good on their promise! Sort of…. They sent another right hand. Oh well, points for effort, I guess? I’ll contact them tomorrow and hopefully get the proper hand in the mail this time. Do I mail the other pieces back?
This can’t be good. Looking to get a replacement.
I spent the last few days in Indianapolis, attending the official G.I. Joe convention. It was a fun, if busy, time, though I’m glad to be home. I’ve been playing a bit of catch-up with my YoJoe updates, so the convention marked a sort of deadline to get things done.
And I did get quite a few entries up! I’m actually a bit pleased with my productivity. But I didn’t get everything I had prepared finished, so now I’m trying to clear out the queue. After all, I’ve just gotten an influx of new figures to archive as well!