(no subject)
My apologies for not getting this entry out sooner than I have. As most of you know I was in Winnipeg from last Friday to last Tuesday and because I came back on a day where I had to work that night, I hadn't gotten much sleep. It's only because I took a nap tonight that I no longer feel lethargic and therefore have the energy to type up this entry.
First, though, some other things which have been going on. I've finally got the ball rolling on getting registered for classes this fall. I had no idea that I could just talk to my advisor online and he'd clear my advisor hold. Given how much he's out of town this is quite convenient. I plan on following up my Computer Science I course (which I ended up getting an A in, my first in about four years) by taking Computer Science II. It meets on the same days that Computer Science I met on last year, but at different times: the lecture is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 AM to 9:45 (one hour earlier than for CS I last semester) and the lab is on Tuesday from 10 AM to 11:45 (two hours later than for CS I). This means I'll have to get back from work earlier to make the lectures on Wednesday and Friday (and I'll be able to get to bed an hour earlier than I did last spring), but I don't have to get up so early to make the lab this fall. Overall I think this schedule is going to work better for me.
I'm pretty much done with software updates for all my computers except for Saionji, the iMac, which I recently got working again after dealing with some power issues. Dusting off its motherboard seems to have helped as there was caked-on dust in some spots. The screen still flickers from time to time like it did before but this seems to be less frequent now. Because I took out the battery, I had to tell it where to find the Open Firmware boot file and NetBSD kernel again which was more an exercise of my memory than looking at the documentation. As for the other systems, Kensuke was ready before I left and Kaworu got done on the last night of my trip. Probably the biggest change in the software I use was with Xfce. The switch from version 4.2 to 4.4 was somewhat dramatic and, in my opinion, not for the better. It seems to me that the default interface for this once-great desktop environment is trying to match that of GNOME, which I also liked at one point but have thought has gotten worse as time goes by. The most dramatic change was the addition of the Xfce menu on the panel by default and the elimination of the button-attached panel menus, which was a carryover from when Xfce was essentially a clone of CDE. Its new file manager, Thunar, works more like a conventional navigational file manager like Nautilus, Konqueror, or Explorer, but unfortunately it didn't inherit Xffm's excellent Samba support, which was my major reason to use that file manager. I think that it may be time for me to drop this desktop environment completely and stick with using a window manager only as I think most of these changes have been for the worse.
And now, your regularly scheduled vacation details. Note that each day gets its own LiveJournal cut this time, a format I was going to start off with in my Buffalo vacation entry. Since I haven't finished that entry yet, I'll be using it for the first time here.
First off, this is the first vacation where I've left on the day that I've had to work an overnight shift. That pretty much set the tone for this day, as I hardly got any sleep. I tried going to bed later the previous day in the hope that I'd wake up at around 10 PM or so and get a full eight hours of sleep before I went to work and then left, but I ended up getting up at about 6 PM instead. I took a nap after work and woke up to my alarm. I packed up the rest of my stuff, (I'd packed up some of it the day before), showered, ate, then put everything in the car, and took off. About six minutes into driving to the airport I realized that I forgot my ticket for my weekend pass for Ai-Kon, so I exited off the freeway and went back for it. Once I had my ticket I started driving to the airport again. I got there later than I wanted but still made the plane with time to spare. This was the first time I was on a turboprop instead of a jet and I didn't expect it to be so noisy. It was even more so since I sat near one of the propellers. Once I arrived in Minneapolis/St. Paul International I found the gate for my flight to Winnipeg, made my way near it, did some things on my laptop, ate at the Northern Lights Grill, the airport's one sit-down restaurant similar to the O'Hare Bar and Grill, then started reading my copy of the first volume of the "Gravitation" manga. Once on the plane I kept reading, occasionally glancing out the window during takeoff and when we were in the air and nervously anticipating having to go through customs. I'd finished the manga before we landed and after getting my carry-on bag joined everyone else in line to go through customs. It took about five minutes before it was my turn. I'd tried to breathe deeply on the plane so that I wouldn't be so nervous and it worked somewhat. The border guard asked me the usual questions and I answered truthfully, though I probably shouldn't have mentioned meeting Brian on the Internet as that's what probably led to what happened next: I was told to go into the immigration office for further questioning. The guard in there was more laid-back and when I used my laptop to show him my itinerary (my printer can't currently print using the black ink cartridge) he seemed interested in the fact that it was running Linux. After he was done with me I went to the baggage claim and got my large bag, then proceeded to the second checkpoint. After asking me some of the same questions the guard there told me to follow the red arrows - which I knew from last year meant that they wanted to search my bags. Unlike last year there weren't a whole lot of people there so I didn't have to wait. The guard who searched my bags was the same guard from the first checkpoint. He remarked that my large bag didn't seem to be carrying much, but other than that he seemed a bit friendlier than he did at the first checkpoint. He swabbed my glasses for the substance test but unlike last year nothing came up and he didn't test anything else. He also wanted to check my laptop with a CD he had out but after I told him that a) I wasn't running Windows and b) the lens on the CD module for the laptop doesn't work (I'd damaged it in a misguided attempt to clean it) he let it go. Overall it went much quicker than last year, where I spent over an hour getting through customs. This year it was maybe twenty minutes.
I met Brian in the lobby. After spending a little time looking for a machine on which he could pay for the parking we set off for his place where dropped off my stuff, and I decided that, despite my lack of sleep over the past two days I was up for going to Ai-Kon that night, so after calling Paul to make sure he was already there and to tell him that I was coming, Brian drove me to the Winnipeg Convention Center. I went in, gave my ticket to the lady at the door, and got my registration tag, program, and schedule. After that I set off for one of the screening rooms to watch the Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament going on there. Unfortunately it was too late for me to enter so I watched for about fifteen minutes (and made some comments that I probably shouldn't have) and then decided to try to find Paul in the game room. I was amazed by the sheer number of games they had in there; as Paul would tell me later, the number of games in there was quite large and most likely second only to the number at Anime Central. Super Smash Bros. Melee wasn't in there at the moment since that equipment was being used for the tournament, but they did have DDR, Guitar Hero, a Wii with various games that I'd see only momentarily throughout the time of the convention, and quite a few imports. I found Paul and told him about the tournament. We went there and he remarked at how the people in it weren't very good. Most were using what I call the cheap characters: Marth, Sheik, and Link. We didn't stay there for long, but I wanted to see what else was going on so instead of following Paul back to the game room I decided to do some exploring on my own. There were several screening rooms with various anime series playing as well as the dealers' room and the artists' room, neither of which I'd even step into until Sunday afternoon. After looking around I decided to pop into the main screening room where one of the Naruto movies was playing. I'd heard about Naruto before, but I'd never seen any of the anime or played the video games and it seemed like a lot of people at Ai-Kon liked it, so I decided to stay around and watch the movie for a little while. It was okay, but unfortunately it didn't keep my interest enough to keep me from dozing off about a half-hour after I started watching. After that I went back into the game room. The GameCube was set up and people were playing SSB:M on it, so I decided to join in. Let me say this now: rumors of people at Ai-Kon being poor SSB:M players were greatly exaggerated. Granted most of the people who won used the three cheap characters I stated above, but even so there were some excellent players there. The one that stood out the most for me was this guy with blonde, curly hair who was in into Dragonball Z (and would show up in cosplay as a Dragonball Z character the next day). He was usually the one who would win if he was playing at all. There was actually a whole group of Dragonball Z fans, of which he was one, who ended up hogging the GameCube after 12:30 that night. At that point I decided to watch people play some other games until they cleared out, then went back to SSB:M until about 2:30, when I decided to call it a night. At this point Paul was on staff for the room but so was Rodd and we'd pretty much planned this anyway, so Paul drove me back to Brian's. It's a good thing Brian had given me a spare key and card (the card is needed to get into the main residential area where the elevators are) since he was sleeping by the time I got in. I undressed, got into my pajama bottoms and went right to bed.
I actually woke up at about 8 AM, but didn't get out of bed until Brian did at around 10. We had a breakfast of oatmeal and green tea, then I showered and got dressed. Brian also changed and after doing some poking around on his local copy of Wikipedia we went out for lunch. We first tried a place called Super Luigi's Pizza, but since they were playing a commercial radio station on the music system Brian decided he didn't want to eat there, so we went to a small cafe instead. I had some sort of turkey sandwich and I don't remember what Brian had. After lunch we went to a small outdoor market where Brian picked up some berries, then we drove by the school where one of Paul's friends had gone before he dropped me off at the convention center for the only full day of Ai-Kon.
Since I had my name badge from the previous day and I'd paid for a weekend pass I could just walk right in, which is what I did. I wanted to attend the "So You Want To Be a Voice Actor" panel, but I'd already missed the first half-hour of it. When I walked in it was standing-room only, so I stood in the back, though I managed to get to the corner opposite the door. The two guests of honor, Greg Ayres and Vic Mignogna, were talking about how to get into voice acting, what is involved in actually doing it, and other aspects of being a voice actor. Most of the advice didn't surprise me: get into theatre, act as much as you can, and don't do it for the fame. The one piece of advice that did surprise me was the piece that I think I'd have the most trouble with if voice acting were the direction I wanted to go: come up with your own character and voice that rather than focusing on imitating the characters that other voice actors have voiced. Another piece of advice that surprised me at first but made sense as I thought about it was to take classes in and get involved with improvisation. All this talk about theatre triggered memories of when I was in the drama club and performing in high school. I enjoyed performing (I was always onstage, which I'm sure is something that may surprise a lot of readers) but never seriously considered becoming an actor (voice or otherwise) for the same reason why I ultimately decided not to become a radio talk show host: I had a lot of intelligence and I didn't think I'd be able to use it, or at least as much as I wanted to, in such a profession. It's not that I wouldn't act again; if it weren't for my crazy schedule I'd probably be involved in community theatre. It's that I don't know if I'd want to do it for a living as I've found over the years that I have more of a technical mind than a creative one. As for voice acting, I have somewhat of an interest in it (or else I wouldn't have gone to the panel at all), but I don't think I'd make it a profession.
After the panel I went into the game room. SSB:M was pretty full so I went over to the Guitar Hero section. It was here that I met the person I'd spend most of the rest of the day with. Her name was Charli and she was from a town about an hour away from Winnipeg (I forget which one). It started out with me wanting to play the cooperative mode with someone so I could be on the bass part instead of the lead. After plugging in someone else's guitar (that someone else would prove to be a really good player later on) we played and had some fun. After that we got to talking. Meanwhile her boyfriend Derek started playing and blew me away with how well he played on expert. From there we went to the lobby and met up with two of their friends, Crystal and Michael and talked to them in the lobby. Both looked pretty tired and it was here that I learned they got a hotel room and had a total of eight people using it, so some of them had to sleep on the floor. From there Charli and I pretty much hung out together switching between the game room and the lobby, although at one point we did go to one of the screening rooms because she wanted to see (and apparently laugh at) the first "Street Fighter" movie. I went because I wanted to talk to her more, but mostly because I'd been standing for most of the day and I wanted to take advantage of the chance to sit down for more than five minutes. Once back in the game room we met another one of her friends: Will, who turned out to be gay but also quite shy. I should note that all these people seemed to match the average age of the people I was seeing in the lobby: 16 to 18. I felt old being around these people, but I didn't mind. Other things that Charli and I did were play two imported games: one with "Fever" in its name that seemed like a somewhat simplified "BeatMania" for the younger crowd, and a fighting game with some interesting characters.
Later that night we saw Greg Ayres in the lobby. Charli had told me earlier that she wanted to get his autograph so we spent a good part of the night trying to do just that. At first I was quite indifferent, but as time went on the fanboy in me started to emerge and I found myself wanting to talk to him as much as she did. We first caught up with him by the registration table and after I bought an Ai-Kon button she told me that she wanted to meet him but felt too nervous to do it herself so I volunteered to do it for her. He had a good-sized crowd around him and was answering questions about various anime he'd done voices for. I put in a comment here and there and before I knew it Charli was almost right beside me looking in on the group. Greg said he wanted to go outside for a smoke (how he can smoke and still do a great job as a voice actor I don't know) and the whole group - us included - followed him. He had his smoke while he continued talking to everyone gathered around him, and at some point he started signing autographs. Charli saw that he had a yaoi button on and got him to sign her bag with "I Love Yaoi" on the front. He signed it "Me too!! - Greg Ayres" which led her to think that maybe he was gay. I don't know what to think but it's probable. Later on people were saying where they came from and after I answered Greg said he was glad to see someone else from the States.
At this point we knew the dance had started and Charli had mentioned she wanted to go, so we left Greg and his entourage behind and went to the dance. It had been years since I'd been at one, but I decided I was going to have fun no matter what happened. At one point Charli's group was there and everyone danced except for Will, who seemed to be quite self-conscious. At one point everyone left except for Will and me and Charli asked me to watch over Will. I don't know why since he seemed to be doing okay, self-consciousness aside. Besides, he hardly knew me and I couldn't help but feel like a spy. Anyway, Charli and Derek came back later. Greg walked in even later with his entourage, but I decided not to join them. I'd had enough of being a fanboy for one night. Besides there would be plenty more opportunity the next day.
At about a quarter to two I decided it was time for me to go back to Brian's, so I asked Paul to take me back there. He did and I got back at around 2 AM. Once again Brian had already gone to bed, so I did the same.
Brian had set his radio to go off at around 9 AM. I woke up at 8, went back to sleep, and then was awakened by the radio at 9. We ate, poked around online for a bit, then I showered and we were off to the convention center. This was the last day of Ai-Kon and there was a panel called "Fansubbing, Downloading, the Internet, and You" that I wanted to attend. I came in about a half-hour after the panel started but unlike the voice acting panel there were a few seats left so I took one near the back. Only Greg was there this time. The title pretty much says what was covered. For the most part Greg acted as an apologist for the anime distributors, but he did have some good points about fansubbing, which were that fansubs aren't necessarily more accurate than the official translations and that it's questionable how many people are actually checking fansubs for accuracy and that the people who are doing so may not be qualified. As for downloading, I could see his point about people who download not paying for what they're seeing and this hurting the companies and ultimately leading the production houses not to make North American releases, but I have a problem with his use of the term "stealing" to describe this and I've always had a problem with the term "intellectual property." "Stealing" implies that someone is taking actual material from the companies such that they are being denied a copy to sell, which isn't the case if someone makes a copy. As for "intellectual property," I fail to see how something as intangible as an idea should be treated by the law like a piece of land, a car, a TV, etc. He did bring up something that amazed me: in Japan they have to pay the equivalent of $60 for a DVD with only two episodes on it, meaning they're helping to subsidize our purchases. I'd bring this up with Brian later and he had his own theory on this, but I'll get to that later. He also brought up something else I was interested in: free and legal ways to sample anime. His list included conventions, DVDs from anime magazines, most notably Newtype, and one I'd forgotten about but decided to take advantage of at home: the library. I did end up asking a question: how often do North American production companies start work on dubs before the contract with the original production house is signed and the deal falls through? Greg's answer in a nutshell: quite often. The most memorable moment, however, was when a guy came in about a half-hour before the panel was over and decided to play devil's advocate by saying he downloads all his anime off the Internet, never buys any DVDs, etc. At this point Greg took off his jacket and his belt and made like he was going to kick the guy's ass! He didn't of course, but he and the guy did get into quite the argument. Greg had answered most of the guy's questions before he came in so it was somewhat annoying to have to go through all that again, so Greg kept it short. That pretty much ended the panel.
After the panel I decided to try to find Charli and her friends. I found them sitting near the dealer's room but they didn't seem to want my attention so I decided to check out both the dealers' room and the artists' faire instead. I ended up making two passes through the dealers' room. The first time I didn't see anything that interested me all that much, probably because I wasn't looking closely, partly because I was limiting my scope, and partly because I was still being a tightwad. One of the interesting things I found was that for most of the manga series in the dealers' room the first volume wasn't available. Since I like to read my manga in sequence this stopped me from starting quite a few manga series that I otherwise may have bought. This probably wasn't the case in the yaoi section, but I didn't muster up the courage to even check that section out. After about ten minutes I left the dealers' room and went into the artists' venue. Here I found things I was willing to buy. The first thing I bought was a drawing of something that could have been a logo for Ai-Kon itself: a girl admiring the heap of anime stuff she's gotten and underneath it all is a boy. The second thing I bought was a print of a wonderful drawing of a surreal pipe maze from the Super Mario Bros. series with Piranha Plants coming out of a few of the pipes and Mario silhouetted in the top left corner. The girl who sold it to me said that I was buying the last one, that Greg liked this print, and that she was saving a copy for him. All this information would be pretty valuable later on. The final thing I got was a print on photographic paper of a guy from an anime I didn't know of. This was definitely an impulse purchase: I liked the way he looked and I decided that was all the reason I needed to buy it. After going through the artists' faire I headed back to the dealers' room for a second pass. I ended up looking at a collection of soundtracks for various anime and video games. The Gravitation Vocal Collection was the first one to catch my eye, but the first one I wanted to buy was one that was buried under another CD set: DDR 3rd Mix. It was at this point when the dealer came up to me and we started talking. She was from Calgary and when she saw my stuff from the artists' faire she commented that there's actually more people who visit the artists venue at conventions than the dealers' room since the dealers offer mostly the same stuff while the artists always have something different. In this case I'd say it was pretty close but it was also the last day of the convention. I looked around some more and found the second CD that I ended up buying: the Gravitation Vocal Collection. After asking the dealer what the total cost of the CDs would be I decided to get both, which ended up costing me $35 (The DDR 3rd Mix album was actually two CDs).
I left the dealers' room with my CDs and found that Charli and her group were still in the same place so I sat down with them. Derek was sleeping, Charli was writing down a list of manga she owned, Michael and Crystal were talking to each other and Will was nowhere to be found. I pulled out my camera to try to get a picture of Charli and Derek, but Derek woke up and didn't want his picture taken so I held off for the moment. I got a picture later; hopefully I'll be able to get it and the other picture up on my Gopherspace soon. At this point I decided to put the information I learned at the artists' faire to good use and find Greg. He was surrounded by a group of people as usual, but this time he was doing a lot more signing. I waited until he noticed my pipe picture. His eyes widened when he saw it and said "That picture is so cool!" I then told him this was the last one. He looked disappointed so I told him they saved one up for him. I also told him that I wanted him to sign the back of this copy. He didn't get to it at this point since he signed other people's stuff and I didn't have a good surface for him to write on. He then went out for a smoke after telling us that he'd sign more stuff after the closing ceremonies. Someone noticed the drawing and told me he thought it was cool. I told him this was the last copy and we got to talking about some other things as well. His name was Justin and he was from Windsor, about a half-hour to the southwest of Winnipeg.
We ended up staying together as we went to the main showing room which was where the closing ceremonies were going to be held. Justin was looking for his group but couldn't find them and I did likewise with the same results when looking for Charli so we sat together. Behind me was a girl who really liked the drawing and was into all things Mario. She even had an old Mario wallet that was the same kind that I had back when I was a child! I couldn't believe I'd see something like that again and I told her. At this point the closing ceremonies started. The organizers thanked everyone for coming, Greg and Vic made a final appearance and received some gifts from the Ai-Kon staff, Justin and I got in some pictures of them, and then that was it: Ai-Kon was officially over. Both Greg and Vic did have an impromptu autograph signing afterward, though, just like Greg said. Justin and I left the main room and joined the line. We both agreed to take each other's picture with Greg and/or Vic. Justin got his program signed by both and I took his picture with both. I got my program signed by Vic, got the back of the pipe picture signed by Greg, and had my picture taken with Greg. After this Justin and I parted ways and I ended up buying Vic's latest CD from a vendor near the signing area, mostly since I felt I'd given Vic less attention than Greg.
I went to the game room since Paul was my ride back to Brian's. The members of the University of Manitoba Gaming Association were packing up their things and getting ready to move them to the old PC user's group resource center. I wanted to help since a) I hate feeling like I'm not helping out when I can, b) it would get all of us out of there faster, and c) it might be a last chance to meet some new people. It took about an hour before we loaded up the cars and drove to the resource center (my apologies to the people who I helped since I forgot their names). We brought in the stuff and Paul came in shortly after. Bong found a ride home with someone else so Paul took me back to Brian's place and said he and his friends might be doing something at the resource center later that night and asked if I wanted to go. I said I did, and then we said our goodbyes and he left.
Back at Brian's place Brian asked me what I thought of the convention, then started talking about the subject that was on my mind as well: dinner. We were going to go to a pretty fancy restaurant but we forgot to bring along Brian's Show & Save coupon book and they would have been pretty expensive without it, so we went to the Spaghetti Factory instead, which was the last restaurant we went to together last year. It was going to be a half-hour wait for a table so we walked around the Forks much as we had on my previous visits. Among other things we saw a drama being put on by an aboriginal group but unfortunately few people were watching and we didn't stay around for long. We made our way back to the Spaghetti Factory after I got some cash from an ATM after trying two others that were out of service. We sat in the hallway leading to the entrance of the Spaghetti Factory and Brian started asking me about what happened at Ai-Kon. I told him about the panel earlier that day, specifically about what Greg said about Japanese anime fans paying more and getting less than their North American counterparts. He asked me if that was because they were subsidizing access to anime in North America, a possibility I hadn't considered but one I would have asked about at the panel if I had, assuming I would have put my growing fanboyism aside. Brian also asked me another question I hadn't considered, but I can't remember what it was. At this point our table was ready so we went in, ordered, and started eating. The Spaghetti Factory's complementary items combine two of my vices: my love for bread and my love for garlic butter. As for dinner itself, Brian had spaghetti and I had lasagna. After we ate we went back to Brian's where we both went online while he played various pieces of music and comedy bits.
Later on we talked to Paul online and he said he was ready to pick me up and that Rodd and Andrew (the same one I met last year) were going to be there. The impression I got was that we'd play some SSB:M and do some other things, so I was eager for him to pick me up. Andrew was with him so we went to pick up Rodd, who lived in a building close to Brian's. He entered Paul's car with a lot of booze in his hands and I had a feeling I knew what direction things were going in, and it didn't involve SSB:M, but I decided to give it a chance. We arrived at the resource center and Rodd fired up his computer. As I'd learn later, this night was actually the night where Paul, Andrew, and Rodd were celebrating the near-completion of their movie. This was where the alcohol came in, and part of this was some beer that Paul's dad brewed himself. I only had one cup of beer and it was pretty dark and tasty. As for the movie it was very amateurish but entertaining. I'll leave it to Paul to describe it in his journal if he's so inclined. But Rodd kept talking about the alcohol and by this time I knew that they wouldn't be playing any video games, which was the main reason I went, so when Paul asked me if I wanted to go back to Brian's I said yes since a) if I hadn't and Paul started drinking I'd be stuck at the resource center with no ride for a few hours and b) Brian wanted to show me a wind farm the next day and wanted to leave by 11 AM. Paul took me back and I went to bed. It was about 1 AM, the earliest I'd go to sleep on this trip.
Brian's radio woke me up at 9 AM. We ate, I showered and Brian changed his clothes and then with a cooler in hand we set out for Brian's car and the wind farm near St. Leon. It took about an hour to get there. This wasn't the first wind farm I'd ever seen since we have quite a few in Iowa, but I could appreciate the significance in a province where hydroelectric power is the primary power source. There was a small kiosk by one of the turbines near the road to St. Leon that had some information. Brian not only read it but took pictures so he could read the information at his leisure. He also took pictures of the turbine itself, two of which were of us standing on the steps leading to the inner shaft. I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't take any pictures. Brian also tried to get some video of the turbine spinning so we'd have a recording of the sound, which was something I wanted, but that didn't turn out very well. After viewing the turbine we headed into St. Leon itself. It was a small town and like several others in the area the majority of the people were francophones and Catholic. That's the conclusion we came to based on the French signs and the Roman Catholic church, anyway. We tried to get more information about the wind farm at a small museum in town, but we managed to stop by during their lunch hour (which really was an hour), so after walking out of a dock leading in to a body of water and walking back we decided to head back to Winnipeg. We were going to stop at a restaurant in one of the small towns we drove through when we were heading toward the wind farm, but after Brian heard the music inside we decided to wait until we got back to Winnipeg to eat. I'm glad we did because Brian ended up cooking some teryaki chicken and fried potatoes using his own recipe: he'd microwave the potatoes and then only fry them for a small amount of time to minimize the contact with the oil and thus the fat content. They ended up being very tasty. After dinner we went online and found Paul on IRC after two hours. He once again invited me to the resource center and this time Bong was with him. I said I'd go, and this time Paul picked me up.
When I arrived at the resource center Bong was playing the original Street Fighter and Paul decided to go on his laptop. Fortunately unlike the night before I thought ahead and brought my own laptop to use in case Bong took a while. Once my laptop was ready to go Paul and I somehow got into an argument over minimalist versus full-features graphical interfaces that was touched off by the fact that I was using FVWM as my window manager at the time. I made it worse by making a comment I shouldn't have, but Paul took it in stride. It was about this time when Ryan came in and Bong was done with his Street Fighter session, so we started playing SSB:M. Bong was very good and I only won our four-man melees twice. I still had fun, though. At about a quarter to 3 I had Paul take me back to Brian's. Once back I went to bed.
I got up at 8 AM since that's when Brian's radio went off. Since my plane would be departing shortly before 1:30 that afternoon and we had some other things we wanted to do while I was still there I had to act fast to get ready for the day. Breakfast was somewhat different this morning. Instead of the usual oatmeal Brian and I ate bagels, a chance I wasn't expecting. After eating, showering, and getting dressed I packed up all my things so that we'd be ready to go when it was time for Brian to take me to the airport. After all that we watched the last episode of "Dr. Who" that Brian had on videotape, then I gave Brian a crash course in how to use GNU Screen. Brian took notes as I went along and even discovered a few things that I didn't know. After seeing him do all that I can see why he's good at all things regarding computing. It was also an usual moment for me as he's usually trying to teach me something.
At about 11:30 we stopped since it was time for us to go. In addition to dropping me off at the airport, Brian was heading to Brandon for the week so he had his things packed up as well and we had to load them into the car. That involved using the freight elevator, which Brian had the foresight to get held so we could load the stuff without having to use the elevator more than once. It took about ten minutes to get the car and load the stuff since it was somewhat of a tight fit, but we did it and headed off to the airport. We got there shortly after noon. I checked in and we said our goodbyes, although like last year we found we started to do it in the wrong place since I'd already checked my luggage. Once we were done I headed in to the customs area, filled out the declaration form (which took longer than it had in that past since I'd actually bought things this time around), and went right to the border guard since there was no one in line. He turned out to have lived in Iowa and worked at John Deere just like my dad, so that really helped grease the wheels in getting me through.
The flight back wasn't too bad. Inspired by Brian's note-taking during our Screen session, I decided to do the same with x11vnc using its manual page to write quick notes on options that interested me on the plane. I did this until I had to put my laptop away, then picked it up again after arriving in Minneapolis/St. Paul and snacking on some garlic bread from the Godfather's Pizza joint in the airport. I stopped before I had to board the plan to Cedar Rapids. I ended up sitting next to a 16 year-old boy named Tony who had just gotten back from a trip to Italy. He'd been an exchange student there for a month and was upset at the fact that he had to deal with airline staff whenever he boarded a plane since he was so young and traveling alone. It turned out he was also into anime and between that and making fun of some of the crazy stuff in the SkyMall magazine we managed to talk through the whole flight back. We parted ways when I got my baggage from the baggage claim. I found my car quickly and drove to Cedar Falls, stopping in Cedar Rapids to do what I almost always do when I go through there: eat at the Dairy Queen by Interstate 380 downtown since it's the only chance I get to get a full meal from one instead of just ice cream. I ended up getting both. I got back shortly after 8 PM.
Overall it was a great vacation. I'd definitely go to Ai-Kon again and as usual Brian was a great host, even more so this time since he hardly got to see me until after the convention. I'd definitely go again - if I'm not already living in Winnipeg by that time next year.
That's all for this entry. I originally started typing this on August 3. It will be August 13 by the time you get to read this. I know I've spent way too much time on this, but I'm glad to finally have it done. I'll also finish my Buffalo entry soon, which is way overdue at this point. I'll also start doing regular weekly entries again starting later this week. This is also when I'll bring the Software of the Week back.
First, though, some other things which have been going on. I've finally got the ball rolling on getting registered for classes this fall. I had no idea that I could just talk to my advisor online and he'd clear my advisor hold. Given how much he's out of town this is quite convenient. I plan on following up my Computer Science I course (which I ended up getting an A in, my first in about four years) by taking Computer Science II. It meets on the same days that Computer Science I met on last year, but at different times: the lecture is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 AM to 9:45 (one hour earlier than for CS I last semester) and the lab is on Tuesday from 10 AM to 11:45 (two hours later than for CS I). This means I'll have to get back from work earlier to make the lectures on Wednesday and Friday (and I'll be able to get to bed an hour earlier than I did last spring), but I don't have to get up so early to make the lab this fall. Overall I think this schedule is going to work better for me.
I'm pretty much done with software updates for all my computers except for Saionji, the iMac, which I recently got working again after dealing with some power issues. Dusting off its motherboard seems to have helped as there was caked-on dust in some spots. The screen still flickers from time to time like it did before but this seems to be less frequent now. Because I took out the battery, I had to tell it where to find the Open Firmware boot file and NetBSD kernel again which was more an exercise of my memory than looking at the documentation. As for the other systems, Kensuke was ready before I left and Kaworu got done on the last night of my trip. Probably the biggest change in the software I use was with Xfce. The switch from version 4.2 to 4.4 was somewhat dramatic and, in my opinion, not for the better. It seems to me that the default interface for this once-great desktop environment is trying to match that of GNOME, which I also liked at one point but have thought has gotten worse as time goes by. The most dramatic change was the addition of the Xfce menu on the panel by default and the elimination of the button-attached panel menus, which was a carryover from when Xfce was essentially a clone of CDE. Its new file manager, Thunar, works more like a conventional navigational file manager like Nautilus, Konqueror, or Explorer, but unfortunately it didn't inherit Xffm's excellent Samba support, which was my major reason to use that file manager. I think that it may be time for me to drop this desktop environment completely and stick with using a window manager only as I think most of these changes have been for the worse.
And now, your regularly scheduled vacation details. Note that each day gets its own LiveJournal cut this time, a format I was going to start off with in my Buffalo vacation entry. Since I haven't finished that entry yet, I'll be using it for the first time here.
First off, this is the first vacation where I've left on the day that I've had to work an overnight shift. That pretty much set the tone for this day, as I hardly got any sleep. I tried going to bed later the previous day in the hope that I'd wake up at around 10 PM or so and get a full eight hours of sleep before I went to work and then left, but I ended up getting up at about 6 PM instead. I took a nap after work and woke up to my alarm. I packed up the rest of my stuff, (I'd packed up some of it the day before), showered, ate, then put everything in the car, and took off. About six minutes into driving to the airport I realized that I forgot my ticket for my weekend pass for Ai-Kon, so I exited off the freeway and went back for it. Once I had my ticket I started driving to the airport again. I got there later than I wanted but still made the plane with time to spare. This was the first time I was on a turboprop instead of a jet and I didn't expect it to be so noisy. It was even more so since I sat near one of the propellers. Once I arrived in Minneapolis/St. Paul International I found the gate for my flight to Winnipeg, made my way near it, did some things on my laptop, ate at the Northern Lights Grill, the airport's one sit-down restaurant similar to the O'Hare Bar and Grill, then started reading my copy of the first volume of the "Gravitation" manga. Once on the plane I kept reading, occasionally glancing out the window during takeoff and when we were in the air and nervously anticipating having to go through customs. I'd finished the manga before we landed and after getting my carry-on bag joined everyone else in line to go through customs. It took about five minutes before it was my turn. I'd tried to breathe deeply on the plane so that I wouldn't be so nervous and it worked somewhat. The border guard asked me the usual questions and I answered truthfully, though I probably shouldn't have mentioned meeting Brian on the Internet as that's what probably led to what happened next: I was told to go into the immigration office for further questioning. The guard in there was more laid-back and when I used my laptop to show him my itinerary (my printer can't currently print using the black ink cartridge) he seemed interested in the fact that it was running Linux. After he was done with me I went to the baggage claim and got my large bag, then proceeded to the second checkpoint. After asking me some of the same questions the guard there told me to follow the red arrows - which I knew from last year meant that they wanted to search my bags. Unlike last year there weren't a whole lot of people there so I didn't have to wait. The guard who searched my bags was the same guard from the first checkpoint. He remarked that my large bag didn't seem to be carrying much, but other than that he seemed a bit friendlier than he did at the first checkpoint. He swabbed my glasses for the substance test but unlike last year nothing came up and he didn't test anything else. He also wanted to check my laptop with a CD he had out but after I told him that a) I wasn't running Windows and b) the lens on the CD module for the laptop doesn't work (I'd damaged it in a misguided attempt to clean it) he let it go. Overall it went much quicker than last year, where I spent over an hour getting through customs. This year it was maybe twenty minutes.
I met Brian in the lobby. After spending a little time looking for a machine on which he could pay for the parking we set off for his place where dropped off my stuff, and I decided that, despite my lack of sleep over the past two days I was up for going to Ai-Kon that night, so after calling Paul to make sure he was already there and to tell him that I was coming, Brian drove me to the Winnipeg Convention Center. I went in, gave my ticket to the lady at the door, and got my registration tag, program, and schedule. After that I set off for one of the screening rooms to watch the Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament going on there. Unfortunately it was too late for me to enter so I watched for about fifteen minutes (and made some comments that I probably shouldn't have) and then decided to try to find Paul in the game room. I was amazed by the sheer number of games they had in there; as Paul would tell me later, the number of games in there was quite large and most likely second only to the number at Anime Central. Super Smash Bros. Melee wasn't in there at the moment since that equipment was being used for the tournament, but they did have DDR, Guitar Hero, a Wii with various games that I'd see only momentarily throughout the time of the convention, and quite a few imports. I found Paul and told him about the tournament. We went there and he remarked at how the people in it weren't very good. Most were using what I call the cheap characters: Marth, Sheik, and Link. We didn't stay there for long, but I wanted to see what else was going on so instead of following Paul back to the game room I decided to do some exploring on my own. There were several screening rooms with various anime series playing as well as the dealers' room and the artists' room, neither of which I'd even step into until Sunday afternoon. After looking around I decided to pop into the main screening room where one of the Naruto movies was playing. I'd heard about Naruto before, but I'd never seen any of the anime or played the video games and it seemed like a lot of people at Ai-Kon liked it, so I decided to stay around and watch the movie for a little while. It was okay, but unfortunately it didn't keep my interest enough to keep me from dozing off about a half-hour after I started watching. After that I went back into the game room. The GameCube was set up and people were playing SSB:M on it, so I decided to join in. Let me say this now: rumors of people at Ai-Kon being poor SSB:M players were greatly exaggerated. Granted most of the people who won used the three cheap characters I stated above, but even so there were some excellent players there. The one that stood out the most for me was this guy with blonde, curly hair who was in into Dragonball Z (and would show up in cosplay as a Dragonball Z character the next day). He was usually the one who would win if he was playing at all. There was actually a whole group of Dragonball Z fans, of which he was one, who ended up hogging the GameCube after 12:30 that night. At that point I decided to watch people play some other games until they cleared out, then went back to SSB:M until about 2:30, when I decided to call it a night. At this point Paul was on staff for the room but so was Rodd and we'd pretty much planned this anyway, so Paul drove me back to Brian's. It's a good thing Brian had given me a spare key and card (the card is needed to get into the main residential area where the elevators are) since he was sleeping by the time I got in. I undressed, got into my pajama bottoms and went right to bed.
I actually woke up at about 8 AM, but didn't get out of bed until Brian did at around 10. We had a breakfast of oatmeal and green tea, then I showered and got dressed. Brian also changed and after doing some poking around on his local copy of Wikipedia we went out for lunch. We first tried a place called Super Luigi's Pizza, but since they were playing a commercial radio station on the music system Brian decided he didn't want to eat there, so we went to a small cafe instead. I had some sort of turkey sandwich and I don't remember what Brian had. After lunch we went to a small outdoor market where Brian picked up some berries, then we drove by the school where one of Paul's friends had gone before he dropped me off at the convention center for the only full day of Ai-Kon.
Since I had my name badge from the previous day and I'd paid for a weekend pass I could just walk right in, which is what I did. I wanted to attend the "So You Want To Be a Voice Actor" panel, but I'd already missed the first half-hour of it. When I walked in it was standing-room only, so I stood in the back, though I managed to get to the corner opposite the door. The two guests of honor, Greg Ayres and Vic Mignogna, were talking about how to get into voice acting, what is involved in actually doing it, and other aspects of being a voice actor. Most of the advice didn't surprise me: get into theatre, act as much as you can, and don't do it for the fame. The one piece of advice that did surprise me was the piece that I think I'd have the most trouble with if voice acting were the direction I wanted to go: come up with your own character and voice that rather than focusing on imitating the characters that other voice actors have voiced. Another piece of advice that surprised me at first but made sense as I thought about it was to take classes in and get involved with improvisation. All this talk about theatre triggered memories of when I was in the drama club and performing in high school. I enjoyed performing (I was always onstage, which I'm sure is something that may surprise a lot of readers) but never seriously considered becoming an actor (voice or otherwise) for the same reason why I ultimately decided not to become a radio talk show host: I had a lot of intelligence and I didn't think I'd be able to use it, or at least as much as I wanted to, in such a profession. It's not that I wouldn't act again; if it weren't for my crazy schedule I'd probably be involved in community theatre. It's that I don't know if I'd want to do it for a living as I've found over the years that I have more of a technical mind than a creative one. As for voice acting, I have somewhat of an interest in it (or else I wouldn't have gone to the panel at all), but I don't think I'd make it a profession.
After the panel I went into the game room. SSB:M was pretty full so I went over to the Guitar Hero section. It was here that I met the person I'd spend most of the rest of the day with. Her name was Charli and she was from a town about an hour away from Winnipeg (I forget which one). It started out with me wanting to play the cooperative mode with someone so I could be on the bass part instead of the lead. After plugging in someone else's guitar (that someone else would prove to be a really good player later on) we played and had some fun. After that we got to talking. Meanwhile her boyfriend Derek started playing and blew me away with how well he played on expert. From there we went to the lobby and met up with two of their friends, Crystal and Michael and talked to them in the lobby. Both looked pretty tired and it was here that I learned they got a hotel room and had a total of eight people using it, so some of them had to sleep on the floor. From there Charli and I pretty much hung out together switching between the game room and the lobby, although at one point we did go to one of the screening rooms because she wanted to see (and apparently laugh at) the first "Street Fighter" movie. I went because I wanted to talk to her more, but mostly because I'd been standing for most of the day and I wanted to take advantage of the chance to sit down for more than five minutes. Once back in the game room we met another one of her friends: Will, who turned out to be gay but also quite shy. I should note that all these people seemed to match the average age of the people I was seeing in the lobby: 16 to 18. I felt old being around these people, but I didn't mind. Other things that Charli and I did were play two imported games: one with "Fever" in its name that seemed like a somewhat simplified "BeatMania" for the younger crowd, and a fighting game with some interesting characters.
Later that night we saw Greg Ayres in the lobby. Charli had told me earlier that she wanted to get his autograph so we spent a good part of the night trying to do just that. At first I was quite indifferent, but as time went on the fanboy in me started to emerge and I found myself wanting to talk to him as much as she did. We first caught up with him by the registration table and after I bought an Ai-Kon button she told me that she wanted to meet him but felt too nervous to do it herself so I volunteered to do it for her. He had a good-sized crowd around him and was answering questions about various anime he'd done voices for. I put in a comment here and there and before I knew it Charli was almost right beside me looking in on the group. Greg said he wanted to go outside for a smoke (how he can smoke and still do a great job as a voice actor I don't know) and the whole group - us included - followed him. He had his smoke while he continued talking to everyone gathered around him, and at some point he started signing autographs. Charli saw that he had a yaoi button on and got him to sign her bag with "I Love Yaoi" on the front. He signed it "Me too!! - Greg Ayres" which led her to think that maybe he was gay. I don't know what to think but it's probable. Later on people were saying where they came from and after I answered Greg said he was glad to see someone else from the States.
At this point we knew the dance had started and Charli had mentioned she wanted to go, so we left Greg and his entourage behind and went to the dance. It had been years since I'd been at one, but I decided I was going to have fun no matter what happened. At one point Charli's group was there and everyone danced except for Will, who seemed to be quite self-conscious. At one point everyone left except for Will and me and Charli asked me to watch over Will. I don't know why since he seemed to be doing okay, self-consciousness aside. Besides, he hardly knew me and I couldn't help but feel like a spy. Anyway, Charli and Derek came back later. Greg walked in even later with his entourage, but I decided not to join them. I'd had enough of being a fanboy for one night. Besides there would be plenty more opportunity the next day.
At about a quarter to two I decided it was time for me to go back to Brian's, so I asked Paul to take me back there. He did and I got back at around 2 AM. Once again Brian had already gone to bed, so I did the same.
Brian had set his radio to go off at around 9 AM. I woke up at 8, went back to sleep, and then was awakened by the radio at 9. We ate, poked around online for a bit, then I showered and we were off to the convention center. This was the last day of Ai-Kon and there was a panel called "Fansubbing, Downloading, the Internet, and You" that I wanted to attend. I came in about a half-hour after the panel started but unlike the voice acting panel there were a few seats left so I took one near the back. Only Greg was there this time. The title pretty much says what was covered. For the most part Greg acted as an apologist for the anime distributors, but he did have some good points about fansubbing, which were that fansubs aren't necessarily more accurate than the official translations and that it's questionable how many people are actually checking fansubs for accuracy and that the people who are doing so may not be qualified. As for downloading, I could see his point about people who download not paying for what they're seeing and this hurting the companies and ultimately leading the production houses not to make North American releases, but I have a problem with his use of the term "stealing" to describe this and I've always had a problem with the term "intellectual property." "Stealing" implies that someone is taking actual material from the companies such that they are being denied a copy to sell, which isn't the case if someone makes a copy. As for "intellectual property," I fail to see how something as intangible as an idea should be treated by the law like a piece of land, a car, a TV, etc. He did bring up something that amazed me: in Japan they have to pay the equivalent of $60 for a DVD with only two episodes on it, meaning they're helping to subsidize our purchases. I'd bring this up with Brian later and he had his own theory on this, but I'll get to that later. He also brought up something else I was interested in: free and legal ways to sample anime. His list included conventions, DVDs from anime magazines, most notably Newtype, and one I'd forgotten about but decided to take advantage of at home: the library. I did end up asking a question: how often do North American production companies start work on dubs before the contract with the original production house is signed and the deal falls through? Greg's answer in a nutshell: quite often. The most memorable moment, however, was when a guy came in about a half-hour before the panel was over and decided to play devil's advocate by saying he downloads all his anime off the Internet, never buys any DVDs, etc. At this point Greg took off his jacket and his belt and made like he was going to kick the guy's ass! He didn't of course, but he and the guy did get into quite the argument. Greg had answered most of the guy's questions before he came in so it was somewhat annoying to have to go through all that again, so Greg kept it short. That pretty much ended the panel.
After the panel I decided to try to find Charli and her friends. I found them sitting near the dealer's room but they didn't seem to want my attention so I decided to check out both the dealers' room and the artists' faire instead. I ended up making two passes through the dealers' room. The first time I didn't see anything that interested me all that much, probably because I wasn't looking closely, partly because I was limiting my scope, and partly because I was still being a tightwad. One of the interesting things I found was that for most of the manga series in the dealers' room the first volume wasn't available. Since I like to read my manga in sequence this stopped me from starting quite a few manga series that I otherwise may have bought. This probably wasn't the case in the yaoi section, but I didn't muster up the courage to even check that section out. After about ten minutes I left the dealers' room and went into the artists' venue. Here I found things I was willing to buy. The first thing I bought was a drawing of something that could have been a logo for Ai-Kon itself: a girl admiring the heap of anime stuff she's gotten and underneath it all is a boy. The second thing I bought was a print of a wonderful drawing of a surreal pipe maze from the Super Mario Bros. series with Piranha Plants coming out of a few of the pipes and Mario silhouetted in the top left corner. The girl who sold it to me said that I was buying the last one, that Greg liked this print, and that she was saving a copy for him. All this information would be pretty valuable later on. The final thing I got was a print on photographic paper of a guy from an anime I didn't know of. This was definitely an impulse purchase: I liked the way he looked and I decided that was all the reason I needed to buy it. After going through the artists' faire I headed back to the dealers' room for a second pass. I ended up looking at a collection of soundtracks for various anime and video games. The Gravitation Vocal Collection was the first one to catch my eye, but the first one I wanted to buy was one that was buried under another CD set: DDR 3rd Mix. It was at this point when the dealer came up to me and we started talking. She was from Calgary and when she saw my stuff from the artists' faire she commented that there's actually more people who visit the artists venue at conventions than the dealers' room since the dealers offer mostly the same stuff while the artists always have something different. In this case I'd say it was pretty close but it was also the last day of the convention. I looked around some more and found the second CD that I ended up buying: the Gravitation Vocal Collection. After asking the dealer what the total cost of the CDs would be I decided to get both, which ended up costing me $35 (The DDR 3rd Mix album was actually two CDs).
I left the dealers' room with my CDs and found that Charli and her group were still in the same place so I sat down with them. Derek was sleeping, Charli was writing down a list of manga she owned, Michael and Crystal were talking to each other and Will was nowhere to be found. I pulled out my camera to try to get a picture of Charli and Derek, but Derek woke up and didn't want his picture taken so I held off for the moment. I got a picture later; hopefully I'll be able to get it and the other picture up on my Gopherspace soon. At this point I decided to put the information I learned at the artists' faire to good use and find Greg. He was surrounded by a group of people as usual, but this time he was doing a lot more signing. I waited until he noticed my pipe picture. His eyes widened when he saw it and said "That picture is so cool!" I then told him this was the last one. He looked disappointed so I told him they saved one up for him. I also told him that I wanted him to sign the back of this copy. He didn't get to it at this point since he signed other people's stuff and I didn't have a good surface for him to write on. He then went out for a smoke after telling us that he'd sign more stuff after the closing ceremonies. Someone noticed the drawing and told me he thought it was cool. I told him this was the last copy and we got to talking about some other things as well. His name was Justin and he was from Windsor, about a half-hour to the southwest of Winnipeg.
We ended up staying together as we went to the main showing room which was where the closing ceremonies were going to be held. Justin was looking for his group but couldn't find them and I did likewise with the same results when looking for Charli so we sat together. Behind me was a girl who really liked the drawing and was into all things Mario. She even had an old Mario wallet that was the same kind that I had back when I was a child! I couldn't believe I'd see something like that again and I told her. At this point the closing ceremonies started. The organizers thanked everyone for coming, Greg and Vic made a final appearance and received some gifts from the Ai-Kon staff, Justin and I got in some pictures of them, and then that was it: Ai-Kon was officially over. Both Greg and Vic did have an impromptu autograph signing afterward, though, just like Greg said. Justin and I left the main room and joined the line. We both agreed to take each other's picture with Greg and/or Vic. Justin got his program signed by both and I took his picture with both. I got my program signed by Vic, got the back of the pipe picture signed by Greg, and had my picture taken with Greg. After this Justin and I parted ways and I ended up buying Vic's latest CD from a vendor near the signing area, mostly since I felt I'd given Vic less attention than Greg.
I went to the game room since Paul was my ride back to Brian's. The members of the University of Manitoba Gaming Association were packing up their things and getting ready to move them to the old PC user's group resource center. I wanted to help since a) I hate feeling like I'm not helping out when I can, b) it would get all of us out of there faster, and c) it might be a last chance to meet some new people. It took about an hour before we loaded up the cars and drove to the resource center (my apologies to the people who I helped since I forgot their names). We brought in the stuff and Paul came in shortly after. Bong found a ride home with someone else so Paul took me back to Brian's place and said he and his friends might be doing something at the resource center later that night and asked if I wanted to go. I said I did, and then we said our goodbyes and he left.
Back at Brian's place Brian asked me what I thought of the convention, then started talking about the subject that was on my mind as well: dinner. We were going to go to a pretty fancy restaurant but we forgot to bring along Brian's Show & Save coupon book and they would have been pretty expensive without it, so we went to the Spaghetti Factory instead, which was the last restaurant we went to together last year. It was going to be a half-hour wait for a table so we walked around the Forks much as we had on my previous visits. Among other things we saw a drama being put on by an aboriginal group but unfortunately few people were watching and we didn't stay around for long. We made our way back to the Spaghetti Factory after I got some cash from an ATM after trying two others that were out of service. We sat in the hallway leading to the entrance of the Spaghetti Factory and Brian started asking me about what happened at Ai-Kon. I told him about the panel earlier that day, specifically about what Greg said about Japanese anime fans paying more and getting less than their North American counterparts. He asked me if that was because they were subsidizing access to anime in North America, a possibility I hadn't considered but one I would have asked about at the panel if I had, assuming I would have put my growing fanboyism aside. Brian also asked me another question I hadn't considered, but I can't remember what it was. At this point our table was ready so we went in, ordered, and started eating. The Spaghetti Factory's complementary items combine two of my vices: my love for bread and my love for garlic butter. As for dinner itself, Brian had spaghetti and I had lasagna. After we ate we went back to Brian's where we both went online while he played various pieces of music and comedy bits.
Later on we talked to Paul online and he said he was ready to pick me up and that Rodd and Andrew (the same one I met last year) were going to be there. The impression I got was that we'd play some SSB:M and do some other things, so I was eager for him to pick me up. Andrew was with him so we went to pick up Rodd, who lived in a building close to Brian's. He entered Paul's car with a lot of booze in his hands and I had a feeling I knew what direction things were going in, and it didn't involve SSB:M, but I decided to give it a chance. We arrived at the resource center and Rodd fired up his computer. As I'd learn later, this night was actually the night where Paul, Andrew, and Rodd were celebrating the near-completion of their movie. This was where the alcohol came in, and part of this was some beer that Paul's dad brewed himself. I only had one cup of beer and it was pretty dark and tasty. As for the movie it was very amateurish but entertaining. I'll leave it to Paul to describe it in his journal if he's so inclined. But Rodd kept talking about the alcohol and by this time I knew that they wouldn't be playing any video games, which was the main reason I went, so when Paul asked me if I wanted to go back to Brian's I said yes since a) if I hadn't and Paul started drinking I'd be stuck at the resource center with no ride for a few hours and b) Brian wanted to show me a wind farm the next day and wanted to leave by 11 AM. Paul took me back and I went to bed. It was about 1 AM, the earliest I'd go to sleep on this trip.
Brian's radio woke me up at 9 AM. We ate, I showered and Brian changed his clothes and then with a cooler in hand we set out for Brian's car and the wind farm near St. Leon. It took about an hour to get there. This wasn't the first wind farm I'd ever seen since we have quite a few in Iowa, but I could appreciate the significance in a province where hydroelectric power is the primary power source. There was a small kiosk by one of the turbines near the road to St. Leon that had some information. Brian not only read it but took pictures so he could read the information at his leisure. He also took pictures of the turbine itself, two of which were of us standing on the steps leading to the inner shaft. I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't take any pictures. Brian also tried to get some video of the turbine spinning so we'd have a recording of the sound, which was something I wanted, but that didn't turn out very well. After viewing the turbine we headed into St. Leon itself. It was a small town and like several others in the area the majority of the people were francophones and Catholic. That's the conclusion we came to based on the French signs and the Roman Catholic church, anyway. We tried to get more information about the wind farm at a small museum in town, but we managed to stop by during their lunch hour (which really was an hour), so after walking out of a dock leading in to a body of water and walking back we decided to head back to Winnipeg. We were going to stop at a restaurant in one of the small towns we drove through when we were heading toward the wind farm, but after Brian heard the music inside we decided to wait until we got back to Winnipeg to eat. I'm glad we did because Brian ended up cooking some teryaki chicken and fried potatoes using his own recipe: he'd microwave the potatoes and then only fry them for a small amount of time to minimize the contact with the oil and thus the fat content. They ended up being very tasty. After dinner we went online and found Paul on IRC after two hours. He once again invited me to the resource center and this time Bong was with him. I said I'd go, and this time Paul picked me up.
When I arrived at the resource center Bong was playing the original Street Fighter and Paul decided to go on his laptop. Fortunately unlike the night before I thought ahead and brought my own laptop to use in case Bong took a while. Once my laptop was ready to go Paul and I somehow got into an argument over minimalist versus full-features graphical interfaces that was touched off by the fact that I was using FVWM as my window manager at the time. I made it worse by making a comment I shouldn't have, but Paul took it in stride. It was about this time when Ryan came in and Bong was done with his Street Fighter session, so we started playing SSB:M. Bong was very good and I only won our four-man melees twice. I still had fun, though. At about a quarter to 3 I had Paul take me back to Brian's. Once back I went to bed.
I got up at 8 AM since that's when Brian's radio went off. Since my plane would be departing shortly before 1:30 that afternoon and we had some other things we wanted to do while I was still there I had to act fast to get ready for the day. Breakfast was somewhat different this morning. Instead of the usual oatmeal Brian and I ate bagels, a chance I wasn't expecting. After eating, showering, and getting dressed I packed up all my things so that we'd be ready to go when it was time for Brian to take me to the airport. After all that we watched the last episode of "Dr. Who" that Brian had on videotape, then I gave Brian a crash course in how to use GNU Screen. Brian took notes as I went along and even discovered a few things that I didn't know. After seeing him do all that I can see why he's good at all things regarding computing. It was also an usual moment for me as he's usually trying to teach me something.
At about 11:30 we stopped since it was time for us to go. In addition to dropping me off at the airport, Brian was heading to Brandon for the week so he had his things packed up as well and we had to load them into the car. That involved using the freight elevator, which Brian had the foresight to get held so we could load the stuff without having to use the elevator more than once. It took about ten minutes to get the car and load the stuff since it was somewhat of a tight fit, but we did it and headed off to the airport. We got there shortly after noon. I checked in and we said our goodbyes, although like last year we found we started to do it in the wrong place since I'd already checked my luggage. Once we were done I headed in to the customs area, filled out the declaration form (which took longer than it had in that past since I'd actually bought things this time around), and went right to the border guard since there was no one in line. He turned out to have lived in Iowa and worked at John Deere just like my dad, so that really helped grease the wheels in getting me through.
The flight back wasn't too bad. Inspired by Brian's note-taking during our Screen session, I decided to do the same with x11vnc using its manual page to write quick notes on options that interested me on the plane. I did this until I had to put my laptop away, then picked it up again after arriving in Minneapolis/St. Paul and snacking on some garlic bread from the Godfather's Pizza joint in the airport. I stopped before I had to board the plan to Cedar Rapids. I ended up sitting next to a 16 year-old boy named Tony who had just gotten back from a trip to Italy. He'd been an exchange student there for a month and was upset at the fact that he had to deal with airline staff whenever he boarded a plane since he was so young and traveling alone. It turned out he was also into anime and between that and making fun of some of the crazy stuff in the SkyMall magazine we managed to talk through the whole flight back. We parted ways when I got my baggage from the baggage claim. I found my car quickly and drove to Cedar Falls, stopping in Cedar Rapids to do what I almost always do when I go through there: eat at the Dairy Queen by Interstate 380 downtown since it's the only chance I get to get a full meal from one instead of just ice cream. I ended up getting both. I got back shortly after 8 PM.
Overall it was a great vacation. I'd definitely go to Ai-Kon again and as usual Brian was a great host, even more so this time since he hardly got to see me until after the convention. I'd definitely go again - if I'm not already living in Winnipeg by that time next year.
That's all for this entry. I originally started typing this on August 3. It will be August 13 by the time you get to read this. I know I've spent way too much time on this, but I'm glad to finally have it done. I'll also finish my Buffalo entry soon, which is way overdue at this point. I'll also start doing regular weekly entries again starting later this week. This is also when I'll bring the Software of the Week back.