The Wrong Side
At Batsday this year, well the Nightmare Before Batsday to be exact, a band by the name of Abney Park played. Well a long story short, I am so digging them so I thought that I would mention them here. Abney Park Website <-- Such a neat looking website. Lately I just can not stop listing to there music, or singing it in my head. ( ヘッド痛み )
Even though I am not always the biggest fan of embeded videos on blogs I had to put their live Batsday performance on here




Ok enough about Abney Park. Well today was my second day at my new job (Position), it feels good to be the boss. Talk to everyone later. Bye!

Big day!

Today was an awesome/amazing/thrilling/great day. I have finally signed my FULL contract with the state of California with all the plusses (ie. pay increase, full benifets, etc.) that anyone could ever want. And to add to it my new Faculity ID card photo is actualy good looking, wish that my drivers lincence was just as good.


Below are two images that I took at the Mouse House the weekend before last.
The First Image above is a setup (display) in one of the Main Street Shops on the inside
The Image Below was taken with the nightshot my camera of one of the most famious paintings from Disneyland from the Pirates of the Caribeen, however this image was taken at the window of the Worlds of Disney shop in Downtown Disney.

I have been posting to this blog for a little over a year now. It has been enjoyable for me to look back on what has transpired. With that said "stuff" happens that change everything. Tomorrow is the day that will determine if this blog will continue for another day or not. If tomorrow goes in a direction that could be considered well this message will disapear and will be replaced with a picture of a bunny I took the other day, if not... Thank you for reading this blog.

Well looks like everything in my life is almost perfect and great! And is set for the rest of my life! :)

Oh and here is the bunny that has been hanging out just out side my classroom door.


I promised that I would post a trip report of my trek to Japan with Invader Hime. Due to everything... it will most likely not be completed but I will post what I have writen thus far. It is raw and unedited but here it is:
Japan Trip 2006 on www.writely.com

Good night everyone.

Japan!
Yes I am back from Japan and I am already wanting to go back.





Hopefully more pictures to be comming soon! Additional Teaser shots can be found at JAPAN_Teaser_2006

It's been a busy past few months with my machine making things, classes, and work I have posted very little here. This is quite a shame since so much has gone on.

In no standard order:

• Went to Invader Hime's College graduation in Orlando (stayed at the beautiful Pacific Royal @ Universal)
  
• Easter Break in Orlando, rode Everest @ DAK, stayed at Port Orleans Riverside at WDW, and saw Madi Gras at USF
• Saw the new attic in the Haunted Mansion at DL
• etc. etc. etc. etc......... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Get the idea.

So before I get a chance to post any pics here is a random quiz result, Oh before I forget I did a test where using a photo they will tell you who you look the most like... 1st result - Sinead O'Connor. Ok back to the other result.

What breed of dog are you?

Golden RetrieverThe Golden Retriever is a beautiful, sturdy, well-proportioned dog with a feathered, medium-length, cream to golden-colored coat. These are lovable, well-mannered, intelligent dogs with a great charm, they are easily trained, and always patient and gentle with children. The Golden Retriever is loyal, confident, sweet and eager to please. Golden Retrievers enjoy pleasing their masters, so obedience training can be fun. Golden Retriever may become mischievous when alone for long periods and they love to swim.
Take this quiz!








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Well at least I have a fuzzy tail.

Ok Back to the other Face thing-a-ma-jig thingie it can be found at http://www.myheritage.com

Here are how the results turned out:
First pic I used was the image me at Bats Day down on Aug 30.
the results:

1. Namie Amuro
2. Song Hey-kyo
3. Nora Jones
4. Hillary Rodham Clinton
5. Zhang Ziyi
6. Susan Sarandon
7. Lisa Kudrow
8. Michael Jackson

As you can clearly see all women, weird?

Second pic I used was the image of me under the heading Disney Does Halloween.
the results:

1. Sinead O'Connor
2. Michelle Rodriguez
3. Henry Fonda (finaly a guy)
4. Kajol
5. Holly Marie Combs (I'm sad to see Charmed end)
6. Billie Joe Armstrong
7. Michael Owen
8. Rani Mukherjee
9. Gemma Ward
10. Natalie Wood

The company says to use mutiple pictures and compare the repeats, so far I can't find any.

For the last Test I used the image of myself in my full Halloween garb, here were the frighting results.

1. Rani Mukherjee
2. Nadia Comaneci
3. Katherine Hepburn (that's just MEAN!)
4. Peter Jackson
5. Wim Wenders
6. Michelle Pfeiffer (Ha ha)
7. John Lennon (actuly I have been told often that I do look like him)
8. Sid Vicious
9. Helmut Kohl
10. Rutger Hauer

By the way, speaking of halloween and all Disneyland has already put on sale the tickets for this years Halloween even. Yes I have already purchased them.

One last thing related to the Halloween and Disney thing:

XxThe Best and Most Challenging Quiz of The Nightmare Before ChristmasxX

You know so much about the nightmare before christmas. You must research and study it as much as I do. I have loved this movie since I was a kid and studied it very hard. Congratulations.Please Please Please vote for my quiz.
Take this quiz!

I'll possibly be posting later this evening but if I don't that means I had way too much to do before class and will try to post more later. Till then.

My machine finally arrived. It was just like Christmas morning. As I was unpacking the box and saw the blue anoized body I turned into a little kid. The machine is a MaxNC OL 10, not the best machine that they make but just what I needed. The design is setup in such a way that at anytime in the future I can upgrade the machine to have a higher RPM and more horsepower, add on a 4th axis, add coolant, and expand the machine work area. With a work area of 8"X, 5"Y, and 6"Z I have more space than what I am going to need for some time. Considering that the parts that I will be making at this moment, the largest only being 6" x 4" x 0.25" this is perfect. Some of my students were telling me that I should make some belt buckles with the northwest designs on them, maybe the week after spring break I get to work on some designs.






On a completely unrelated note... Last weekend Invader Hime and I went out to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. So much fun. The day started of somewhat rainy so the crowds were nonexistent. We were able to see from the Wagasa Bushline the new stuff that was added including the new path for the tram. Another new item was the new balloon ride that will rise you high above the park. Some time back I had posted on Demonbird some pics of the construction of this new attraction.





More side notes. Next week is Spring Break and I will be flying to Orlando to spend some time with Invader Hime. I still find it somewhat funny how my Spring Break and hers were so far apart. Come on at least have them in the same month. Oh well, it's well make the best of it, after all for me their is only less than 9 weeks left in this semester.

I just wanted to share a couple of pictures from the last few weeks that make me happy.


The photo on the left was taken at disneyland right after a little rain. The image on the right was taken the next day at the Hillcrest Farmers Market. If you day was down well look at these pictures and turn that frown upside down. Before :( => :) After

Here is another piece of jewelery that I am working on. This one I have already cut out a prototype and so far the responce has been great.








And there is another one still a work in progress, but should be completed soon. I hope [:(]

Like I said last time I would be posting pictures of the items rendered before I cut them out. This one might or might not go into production, most likely many changes will occur to the design before final production. The image above was generated from a two step process. The first step was to save the "cut" model in MasterCam X as a STL file. This STL file was then imported into Blender where it was photo rendered.

It is amazing how much publicity the Govenor's visit provided for the Machine Tech department. Seems companies in San Diego now know that City College and MACT really do exist. ( I do believe in MACT, I do, I do...) Over the past few days I have answered phone calls from all over the county from companies and individuals who either read about, the visit and the MACT program, in the newspaper or saw it on the TV. This is great for our students who are always looking for good job placement and also great for the companies looking for skilled/trained labor.

Having recently read the latest Miceage.com article about the changes coming to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, all I can say is WOW. These changes just sound amazing and in my opinion will be a great addition to the ride. I will be sorry to see the Master Gracey story die off but the change sounds for the better. Who I feel sorry for are the folks over at Slave Labor Graphics with their Haunted Mansion comic who have been explaining the whole Master Gracey/Captain Blood storyline that has been very popular among the Disneyland enthusiasts. Guess it is all AU anyway. I guess that it could be explained that maybe the bride is the second owner of the house after Master Gracey? Oh yea, fan fiction here I come.

Like I have the time for that :P

- On a random side note I have begun work on a new set of projects. These projects are dual purpose, first to make some side money and second to possibly win the MasterCam Wildest Part Contest (instructor division). These new projects are focused on creating both jewelery and architechal embelishments (ie. door knobs, darw pulls, plaques, etc) in a combiniation of modern and "Arts and Crafts" styles. So far the process is going well explectly with the help of the great research materials provided thanks to a subscription to American Bungalow, thanks Invader Hime. Once I get the inital designs done I will post some pictures of the CAD models. -

WOW it does not seem like it has been a month since my last post, but time flies when your your having fun. Here is what you all have missed in my time of non posting.
First some stuff happened, then more stuff, this was followed by a little more stuff and then the Govenor of California came by...

Yes, the Termenator himself came by Machine Technologies, don't belive me take a gander at the offical website Govenor's Office. So far this is the only picture with me in it that I have found in the media but hopefuly I will be finding more soon.

On another note I finaly got to ride the new Monsters Inc. ride at DCA. This is a great ride in the style of the old ways of disney prior to the time of ultra cheep. True, not all the AA are the most complex but it is far better than it's predicessor Super Star Limo. In fact it is hard to belive that this is the same ride.

It's silly little quiz time again, this one was to find out witch Wolf's Rain character I am the most like. If you do not know what Wolf's Rain is, right now go and rent the entire series, too good!

Well here is the result:

Hige, ok is that a good thing? Albiet he does look alot like my dog Bella, and he does have a hot girlfriend. To take the quiz here is the link.

This weekend was the California Gift Show (CGS) at the LA Convention Center (LACC). This show is open only to the "gift" industry and being that my mother owns a retail bushiness I was able to attend. This show is where all the companies from around the globe show off what is going to be the new trends in collectibles, interiors, art, and fashion. The show is also spread across to the LA Mart (interiors) and the California Market Center (fashion). On the note of the CMC, this year instead of having those mini shuttles to take you form the LACC to CMC they were using streched Hummer Limos. This was my first time in one of those monstrosities and most likely my last. I don't know why but I was expecting more room inside them? Anyway it looks like, based on the buying trends I saw at the show that "ethnic" is going to be in for the next six months or so. Mainly styles influenced by Middle Eastern and Asian fashion and art will be carried over into American Fashion and Interior design. Otherwise I didn't see anything that really struck my fancy, this might be the reason that I did not buy anything.

The CGS ran form 8am - 6pm so what did I do after 6pm well theme parks of course. That's what the idea was at least. Saturday night we stopped at Knott's Theme Park, however we were all so tired that all we did was buy our chicken and go home. So Sunday evening after all was said and done we all headed over to the Mouse House, that's right the Disneyland Resort. This is where life got sad, well as sad as I ever could be considering I was at the Happiest Place on Earth. The plan was to ride Monsters Inc, take a bunch of photos, eat something and come home. Well the Monsters area was closed to the public when I got there because it was the press event for the official opening of the ride. Oops, I forgot that the ride has been soft open for a month and now it was official. If I had stuck around I could of see all sorts of B list actors and other assorted semi-famous people. But to be truthfully honest I don't care about most of them. The last time I was at DCA and a "famous" person was there was when Raven said the notorious Six Flags is better comment. So with no Monsters we all headed over to Disneyland with no real focus on where we were headed we found ourselves in New Orleans Square and inside of Le Bat 'en Rouge. For those who don't know I often wear a "Button Hat" that is covered in buttons from the Haunted Mansion and Nightmare Before Christmas. Well they had a set of new buttons that I had not seen before so I set out to make my purchase.
As the people in line before me were gathering up their stuff the young lady started ringing up my stuff and some how the topic of how in less than two weeks the shop would be closed, all NBC merchandise will removed from the parks and Haunted Mansion Holiday will not return in '06. This was really sad and shocking to me and the people who were in front of me and the ones behind me who started gathering up as much nightmare stuff as their credit cards could afford. For those non believers, whom I seem to be finding a lot lately, who believe that I just made up this rumor or that this was just a rumor of one CM who did not know what she was saying I did verify this with many other CM's around the park and they all knew the exact same thing. Tim Burton was not happy with how Disney had been portraying his NBC in regards to Haunted Mansion Holiday and considering that the contract between Disney and Burton for the rights to use the characters in the park expires about now, Burton just refused to renew the contract, there for no more NBC at the parks. I didn't realize how odd it was until I noticed how all the NBM and HMH pins were all gone and all the merchandise with Jack on it were rather scarce. The rumor I heard this morning is that all the NBC and HMH merchandise they have left will be sent to the "warehouse" which most likely means the "Character Warehouse" for liquidation. So the evening was ended with a mad dash across the two parks to gather up as much NBC stuff as I could, too bad all the good stuff was gone and I ended up only getting the buttons that I had originally got in line for.

Back at work Monday, it was a funny day, I had students and faculty both who thought that Monday was the first day back to class (bad considering that there are still two weeks to go). Other than that life has been somewhat uneventful.
Well my brain has said it's peace and I will say later all.

I am Sephiroth! You scored 0 good or evil, 1 spirituality, 4 power, and 17 intelligence!

In the beginning there was a man, and his name was Sephiroth, and he was bad... very, very bad. Sephiroth is the kind of guy you put a restraining order on before you even meet him. He's got a head full of bad wiring and funny ideas about his place in the world. He thinks he's the son of God, and that's not good when the God he believes in is Jenova. Religious overtones aside, Sephiroth is a sadistic, calculating, intelligent, unrelenting force to be reckoned with. The guy walks through fire, cleaves Behemoths to pieces in one strike and all that before a picnic at the North Cave with Aeris. He carries a big sword - not so much for the compensating as for the instilling terror factor - and he's not afraid to use it. Sephiroth, if the most convoluted of all FF baddies, is the most infamous due to a bit of drama theater involving an innocent Ancient and his big sword. The one undeniable thing about sephiroth is that he was(is) evil incarnate, and stopping him literally meant(means) the difference between the end of the world and another tomorrow. If you're Sephiroth, please allow me to get the hell out of the way before I iritate you, O Great and Evil one. I really can't think of any good things that can come from someone like sephiroth - perhaps because I'm frozen in terror - so I'll just say "Please don't kill me" and leave you to your own devices. Similar characters include Ultimecia(ff8), and Vormav(fft) Your polar opposite is Yuffie. You can probably get along with Seifer, Delita and Seymour.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 32% on purity You scored higher than 13% on faith You scored higher than 31% on strength You scored higher than 56% on intelligence

Link: The Who are you in the FF Universe Test written by Helbereth on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

This last weekend Invader Hime was here in sunny San Diego, well most of the weekend it was somewhat sunny, before going back to college. I just want to say some things. First Seaport Village has a lot more shops to see than I remember. Second the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade was very nice and very long.... Third Hime was so lucky to see that whale spout. Fourth the diagonal crosswalk in Gaslamp was uber cool and use full -it's the little things-. Fifth the people and food at Royal Thai, Star of India, Casa de Pico, and Casa de Guadlahara are all wonderfully. Ok, that was my quick five comments.

a close up of the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument

Work, work, work... That seems to be all that I have been doing lately. It has been a little lonely City College because the only ones here are the insane students taking the 5 week compressed intersession classes and the skelton crew of the faculty. On the plus side of things this has led me to being rather efficient due to a lack of distractions. Although when the Fadal repair man showed up earlier today it was nice to have some human interaction. To elaborate in the Machine Technologies department at City College we have a majority of two types of CNC mills HAAS and Fadal. Well one of the Fadals, the 4020, at the end of last semester had a odd sound coming form the spindle housing when ran at higher RPM's. So matience was called, they then called Fadal who sent someone out to fix it. It turned out that one of the pulleys that goes form the motor to the spindle was missing some "teeth" from the inside. Twenty minutes later he was done and I was alone again.

On a completely different topic I found recently, yes I know it's not new, on Visions Fantastic's website that they have a cool "radio" of Disneyland music.
http://www.visionsfantastic.com/main.php?page=radio
So if you are a fan of Disneyland music this is a must. Also for those who don't know VS has some of the best images, video, etc. of the DLR than any other site. In some ways I feel it is a better "official" Disneyland website. They have free registration that offers the user many great services.

For the holidays I gave many of my family a star as a little extra stocking stuffer. This little project's CAD and CAM were done in Master-cam and were machined on the VF-2 utilizing High-feed technology. Well they ended up being a huge hit, so much so that some people were starstruck. Ha Ha, yea bad joke. Well one of the students asked if he could modify my program and cut some for his family. His family loved them and his new boss who got to see what the guy can do. Cool.

Picture of one of the stars

Well Invader Hime, just to let you know, this is what the hat has determined for me.



I'm
a Slytherin!

In a somewhat pirate mood I took a couple of quizes and to my suprise i found out some things about me.
first: I am William Turner




Which Pirates of the Caribbean character are you?
and Second:

My pirate name is:

Black Tom Cash

Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. You're musical, and you've got a certain style if not flair. You'll do just fine. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Anyway that is all of that nonsence. Lots of stuff has been going on lately and most of it is preperations for Mondays return to full time work. It is going to be nice to be doing the full time work thing and getting back to the machines/computers.

On a completely unrelated side note aperantly the San Diego Wild Animal Park has hired the company that did much of the work for Disney's Animal Kingdom to help them redesign the Wagasa Bushline Monorail. What is interesting is that the main redesign rumor has the ride replaced with a system rather simmilar to the the Jeeps in Jurasic Park. This is not too indifferent from the Safari ride at AK except with a focus on education not so much entertainment.