2018, the Year in Review

Holy Hell, what a ride! 

2018 found me in five different states, attending multiple conventions, driving, flying, and sailing countless miles, meeting new people, and building tons of cool stuff.  

Somewhere along the way I decided that this year I need to actually get out of my little workshop cave and go to some of the conventions where a lot of my work ends up anyway.  Early on my crew and I started making plans to attend at least a handful.  Why not?

Along the way I've been making a concerted effort to get away from the shop more often to be more sociable.  So there's also been a lot more interesting nights out.  Much of which have me finding pics on my phone that I can't explain the morning after.  Case in point:


Anyhow, read on for a rough timeline...

2016: the Year in Review

So there I was on the morning of January first 2016, somewhere in the frozen backwaters of upstate New York, penniless and hungover with no idea how I was going to get home.  Little did I know, 2016 was going to present me with one of the busiest, craziest, hardest, best, and worst years ever.

For a longer summation, read on...

2015 in Review

Now that I've had a few days to reflect on this latest lap round the fiery ball of death at the center of our solar system, it's time to write up a quick summary.

In short: that was one hell of a ride.

2015 started with me having just returned from another trip to a third-world country to visit with the Lady Shawnon.  As a result, January found me back home, flat broke, and in between major projects.  I was digging through past contacts looking to drum up some business and then, as often happens, after a month of little to do, I suddenly had three major projects dropped on me simultaneously.  Sadly, all three are still covered under non-disclosure agreements.  I'll post details on those as soon as I can.

Of course, just before all of that mess, I'd started preparing for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.  What started as "hey, let's go to this convention in costume," quickly ballooned into, "let's make something like 25 costumes for the entire crew and some of their friends."  This started a massive effort to coordinate builds that really would have made herding mountain lions look sensible and orderly by comparison.  Here's a snapshot of just some of the pieces in progress at a brief, calm moment at the end of one of the days:


Somewhere in the middle of that madness, I had to clear everything out of the shop and dust off some finished costumes because the UK-edition of WIRED magazine was sending a photographer to do a photoshoot.  I invited some friends over and we had a lot of fun playing dress-up:


In the end, we made nineteen sets of Death Watch Mandalorian armor.  Here's a few of them together:

Not pictured: at least four more suits we made that didn't show up for the group photos.

There were also a handful of Sith Acolytes and the Lady Shawnon's Shae Vizla costume:

Not pictured: three other Sith Acolyte costumes that never even came out of the box.

Still, there was a lot of running around and we ended up having fun despite the fact that half of each day was spent scrambling to get people in and out of costume and wrapping up last-minute touches on various outfits.  Along the way I made a few new friends and got a pretty great photo of me after I was killed by Roxy the Rancor:


When we got home, it was time to take stock of the massive disaster that had been left behind in the shop:


Thanks to Trevor and Shawnon, after a solid day of dragging things out, putting stuff away, and hauling trash off to the dump, things were finally back to a usable state.  I can't remember the last time I'd had so much open workbench to use:


Of course, that also meant that it was time to get focused on paying projects again.  One day I'll be able to talk about those.  But not just now.  Suffice it to say, in no time at all the shop was a disaster again:


After that massive burst of building stuff, the next big thing on the schedule was the Bay Area Maker Faire.  Once again, I rounded up the whole crew and set up my usual display:


Once the gates opened, I was pretty steadily swamped with folks checking out all of the bits and pieces that were on display:


The next week, I was on board the SSS Compass Rose enroute to the Ancient Mariner's Regatta.  Once again, the crew did an amazing job and we ended up posing for a quirky group portrait:


Days later I put the finishing touches on the grand prize trophy for the Proving Grounds EVOLVE tournament:


Then I started breaking ground on the tallest thing I've ever built:


Which was met with a significant amount of approval once it was finished:


Shortly after I wrapped that up, Shawnon was back in town:


Having finished her three and a half years of veterinary school in the Caribbean, she and I were able to enjoy a bit of free time.  Somewhere in there we took the dogs to the beach:


Bain seemed to enjoy it most of all:


Shawnon also kept me company in the workshop for a couple of days:


At some point during that break, we took Leeloo to a birthday party where there weren't near enough balloons to achieve liftoff:


A few days later, we set out on the open road:


Which was terrifying:


But after a few leisurely days of driving and visiting friends across the country, we arrived safely in Ithaca, New York:


That's where the Lady Shawnon got to spend her clinical year at the Cornell University Veterinary Hospital:


Days later, I flew back to California:


Where the puptards were pretty happy to see me:


At that point, there was some room in my schedule for a few hobby projects, so I started making things from the upcoming Star Wars movie:


When October rolled around, I was happy to be able to spend a day aboard the Sea Scout Ship Compass Rose during Fleet Week:


November and the beginning of December were a mad rush of scrambling to finish a few costumes to wear to the premier of Episode VII:


Sadly, I didn't get them done in time.  But I did get a set of parts off to a friend of mine who managed to wear hers to the actual red carpet premier in Hollywood:


What I did get to do was fly back to Ithaca and spend Christmas and New Years with the Lady Shawnon in the midst of snowy northern winter wonderland.

So as usual, the year passed with highs and lows, goods and bads, and the end result was that most of us survived.  So that's okay.

Stay tuned for much madness to come in 2016...

Bringing 2010 to a Close

2010 was one hell of a year.  It found me in five countries, several airplanes, one big ship, numerous boats, and, somehow, only five states.  There were ups and downs and each of my little victories was matched by an equal or greater defeat.  I spent most of it feeling like I was doing more and ending up with less to show for it.  Suffice it to say, I'm glad to have this one behind me.


So glad was I that I set out to celebrate the death of 2010 a full day early.  I went with my sisters and a friend to Maggie McGarrity's Pub in North Beach to see the Spazmatics, a nerdy 80's cover band that can be found there every Thursday night.  They make for a good time:





They do such a good job with their nerd motif that they actually stay in character even in between sets.  Here's a couple of pics of nerds with the girls:


 




All of the nerdery made it pretty easy for everyone to be goofy as well:


Here's a winning shot of Kendall rocking out:

(either that or she's ripping a fart, hard to say)
We stayed through both of their sets on stage and ended up leaving around 1a.m. 

On the morning of New Year's Eve I awoke on the couch at my parents' house when the niece and nephew started putting small dogs on top of me.  It's hard to sleep when a hybrid chihuahua-weiner-shivery-annoying dog sticks its tongue in your nostril.

Once I'd had time to regain calm and got out of my puppy killing mood, I went outside with the kids and helped them launch model rockets for a while.  Here's a shot of the junior rocketeers in the midst of their pre-flight checks:


There were several launches and I filmed them all, but the best part was the countdown sequence shown here:

In the aftermath, if you go to that same spot and look at the trees in the background, you can find a couple hundred dollars worth of model rockets dangling from the branches.

When they'd tired of launching things, I had them stow the remnants back in my workshop.  That's when my nephew decided he had to try on my HALO armor.  It was a tiny bit too big for him:


His older sister got in ot it too, but with less gusto:


Turns out he was so fond of the whole rig that he refused to take the helmet off until he went to bed:


That was New Year's Eve.  I'm only a bit sad to say that I decided to stay in.  I fell asleep barely half an hour into the new year while watching a movie.  It was a fitting fizzling end to the year.

Here's to hoping for a better 2011.

,

Happy New Year

Saturday marked the first day of the Persian New Year, known locally as "Nowruz." Under the Taliban regime, the traditional celebrations (which included such sinful acts as singing, dancing, and *gasp* kite running) were banned as being against the Quran. It's hard to imagine a civilization that would ban a New Year's celebration, but then again I come from the land of MTV Spring Break and Girls Gone Wild.

Now that we're here the locals get to party like it's 1388. That's the current year according to their calendar anyway. It puts this society only 621 years behind the rest of the world, so it's probably about right.

Predictably, the Taliban had a blast:

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All the while I've been here I've been trying to come up with any way that I can think of to make life better for the people here.

I'm still at a loss.