My truck of 11+ years is starting to show its age, sadly.. Not too too long ago I started having weird vibrations coming through the steering wheel as I drove, which scared the bejeesus out of me that my wheels were going to fall off every time I got on I-95. I took it to the shop and they told me that my rear brakes had locked up and were just riding the discs constantly. They wanted a thousand to replace them and to replace my oxygen sensors, which apparently have gone tits-up as well. I told them that the truck wasn't worth that much as it sat, so it wasn't worth it. I was going to just clamp off the brake lines and remove the brakes entirely, but I guess I just wore through the calipers or something, b/c the vibrations have stopped :) Although there's no way in hell I'll pass another VEIP emissions test in this thing, and my registration got revoked b/c the police never registered my completed repair order. So.... I'm going to buy a new car this year.

And no more pickup truck for me. I'm not too keen on schlepping my friend's stuff around for them at 15mpg (at best). I will sort of miss not worrying about how closely I part to the assholes who park next to the parking-space lines, or how quickly I back into brick walls, though.. Oh well. I need a car that doesn't scream 'hillbilly' and assault my wallet every week when I get gas :(

I'm thinking either I'll get a tiny car like the new Scion iQ or perhaps a small hatchback (in the 14-17k range). Something with 30+MPG would be beautiful for my poor wages. I still have BB and plan to start riding her in a month or so, but at some point I'll get the state after me for the truck so I wanna just trade it in for the $500 they'll give me or donate it.



In old news, I hit up the replacement-con for New Year's Furry Ball over new years w/ my friend, and boy oh boy did that suck. 3 days we stayed in that hotel... and we spent all of about 20 minutes in the actual con-space. Hopefully next year the NYFB will be back. I'm leaving tomorrow for Furry Weekend Atlant to stay with some friends and help throw a party. I've never been to FWA but I hear good things about it. I'm planning to skip Anthrocon this year (omg rly?), which will break my 11-year streak for that con. But frankly AC just isn't that fun anymore, at least for me, to justify the cost and lying to my boss about skipping 2 days of work. Instead I'll be at FWA.... and Midwest FurFest this November! That is, if I can still afford it by then.


PS I really don't post here very often anymore, but I do post quite a lot on Twitter - find me there or on FurAffinity if you like :)

I may be moving in the next few months to a different domicile in the same Greater Balto area. I was worried about being evicted recently due to landlords changing their breed restrictions list, but they grandfathered me in apparently. But I may still move since I'm a bit tired paying this much rent for a 1-bedroom apt and driving a full hour each way to work. If I move, I may be looking for a room-mate to split rent with.. I haven't really decided yet since it'd almost definitely involve lease-breaking fees and moving fees as well, which would pay off if I were splitting rent but not so much if I weren't. I've about had my fill of Columbia, though, after 4+ years here.

I was called in for a very unexpected job interview the other day, and I may or may not be getting a new job very soon. I don't know if it's still on the table or not, and I don't know what kind of jeopardy it would put the publications I'm trying to push out the door either.. but it'd be an increase in pay and probably other nice things as well. Also it'd be in a completely different area of research than I've been doing so far, so I dunno. I still have to wait and see it it falls through or comes together before I worry too much about it.

I'm still planning to go to FurFright in a few weeks, and Playa Del Fuego the week before that..which means less than two weeks from now.. I'm filling in as the camp chef, so I need to buy some food to bring up there and come up with the costs for it all (and if I'm lucky, get donations from campers).

Last weekend was a charity fursuiting event for the MS society, which was rather fun (although very small in population). I don't get to fursuit enough! Although I will be suiting at PDF and FF.

Looks like I won't be going home for Thanksgiving this year either, especially if I end up moving. I'm broke as a joke right now and can't afford the time or the tickets. I'll be back down there for Xmas anyway, a month later.



I post mostly on Twatter nowadays instead of LJ, but I'll still keep posting here from time to time, since I wasted money on a permanent account here :)

So the other day I turned 32. I don't celebrate my birthday anymore, not since I turned 25 and got a little car insurance rate decrease (what else is there to celebrate after 21, birthday-wise, until I get to around 50?). I just feel it's a bit narcissistic and self-congratulatory, especially since I didn't do anything particular to deserve a celebration except cheat death. And usually I manage to scrape through the day without more than a cursory call and card from my mother/sister/grandmother and perhaps one or two old friends sending a Facebook wall post...which I do appreciate, of course, but I thank them and try to forget about it quickly, since birthdays are for kids (in my humble opinion). But this year my friends up here in Murrland surprised me at my apartment for my birthday with a cake and ice cream and a gift-card to Victoria's Secret. Because I totes shop there so much :P Oryx, Ferian, m4, Kinshasa, Fawks Beaumont, and Kellogg all colluded (probably under Oryx's direction) to catch me off guard after I got home from work. The one time I didn't answer my front door with a pistol in my hand, too, luckily! I really didn't suspect it, which isn't a likely scenario; I was too concerned with picking up a delivery and such to think about it. But we hung out and ate Vietnamese and it was a nice break, even though I was a bit uncomfortable with all my friends seeing my messy messy apartment. I do feel really lucky to have nice friends; It's pretty much the only reason I'm continuing to live up here in the cold, wet Balto/DC area.

I had a temporary roommate for a couple of weeks leading up to my birthday. Kellogg Collie needed a place to crash until he left for Oklahoma after his lease expired, and was having trouble getting anyone to let him stay over, so I let him crash on the couch. I haven't had a roommate since like 1999 or something, but it was only for a short time and I'm hardly in my apartment lately anyway. There was a total of 8 fursuits in that apartment with him there, although we only got them out once to take some pictures with them. I would've liked to shoot more, but I'm always so busy or tired in the evenings I have trouble getting my druthers to put on a suit and operate my studio. He can always come back over another time. Overall it was minimal damage and hassle having him over; I thought it would be more of a burden on me, but I couldn't just let him sleep in his car for 2 weeks. Although I've abolished any doubts about whether I would want to move in with a permanent roommate anytime soon... It puts a bit of a damper on me being able to walk around my apartment naked :(

I've been devoting a lot of time and money (many dozens of hours and many hundreds of dollars) lately to the upcoming Playa del Fuego coming up at the end of this month. This time is 10 times as planned-out as it was last time, and costs are running almost as high as tempers. There are only a small core group of people involved in the planning and it's hard not to have people stepping on each other' toes. After this PDF I would really like to have a final budget breakdown, along with at least a vague list of money/items/time that was donated by certain people published just to show the wild disparity. Our theme camp is planning to have multiple events to the public - Espresso bar (with 2 baristas, several fursuiting waiters, several specialty drinks, etc); a 'trattoria' (with more fursuiting waiters, unique hors d'oevres, etc), and a club (with custom-built liquor bar, unique mixed drinks, shots, and yes, fursuiting bartenders). I hope to get at least some great photos of all of it. No project burn this time, but at least we have theme camp space.

I got my amateur radio license (ham radio license) recently, ostensibly for the purpose of keeping in communications at PDF when I'm on my volunteer shifts. I already drilled a hole in my truck roof and installed an antenna mount... it's an old truck and I've damaged it worse without even trying, so it was a flippant decision. One more expensive electronics-based jag. It kind of makes me want to find all my old CB stuff back home and bring it up here as well.

Also coming up is FurAffinity: United (this weekend!), the Chesapeake Challenge, where our Critters group is going to be running the lunch rest stop, and then Anthrocon in June/July.

I bought a new laptop this weekend - a new, from-the-store 11" MacBook Air, with 128GB solid-state drive, 2GB RAM (which much to my dismay is NOT upgradable -- I wish the "salesman" (who don't seem to know much of anything about their products like they used to, or for that matter be motivated in the least to actually, y'know, *sell* something) would have told me that first), no optical drive, very light, very thin, very sexy. I bought it because, as I don't know if I've even mentioned here, I lost my iPad shortly after the new year. Gone, poof, disappeared. Almost definitely picked up by a thief within minutes of me setting it down somewhere and turning my back, but because I'm so scatterbrained I didn't notice for almost a week. I contacted AT&T (who I have the iPad's 3G contract with), and they confirmed it was still receiving data. That last part scared me because I'd hoped it'd had time to auto-lock before someone got their thief-hands on it.. 10 wrong guesses and all data would've wiped. If I'd installed the little fancy app on it, I could've tracked the damn thing myself..but I didn't. So I had ATT suspend (but not cancel) my 3G service so I could still be grandfathered into the $30 unlimited data plan that they don't offer anymore.

But there was sensitive data on the iPad.."adult" pictures, unpublished scientific data, saved passwords, bank statements, high-res images of porn I'd commissioned (which only I have the right to own, unlike the low-res versions posted on FA and such), emails to my mom, etc. etc., which I really really hope the thief wasn't able to get into. But that's the thing..I don't know. I'll know if I ever see that unposted porn actually posted, and if my identity gets stolen, and soforth. Not a pleasant thought. Although neither is the thought of me getting two beautiful iPad cases less than a week before I lost the damn pad..

All of it made me think long about security, which I've become super-complacent about in the past few years. I carry a cellphone at all times (ALL times - think about that when I'm chatting with you on IM), and I had that iPad with me often as well, and now the MBA replacement will be, too. That's not to mention the MacBook Pro which I've had for almost 4 years sitting on my bed (where the cleaning ladies whose backgrounds I know nothing about come in my room twice a month), and the brand new gaming PC I built in my living room always on w/o any passwords on it, and the work computer which has an attached external hard drive containing almost everything I care about in the world, data-wise.

I don't protect my data well enough. I'm going to try to change that meaningfully in the future, so that when (not IF, but WHEN..it's only a matter of time before I lose another expensive toy) I have an "oh shit" moment, I don't have another "OH SHIT" moment. I can (barely) afford to lose a computer, but I cannot afford to deal with true theft of a lot of the things inside of it.

But, I've rather forgotten how to be more secure with my data. I started setting my new lappy with a swipe-to-turn on screensaver/password lock, and set my password to 17 characters instead of 6. I'm considering running the "FileVault" data encryption program for my SSDs too, although I dunno how that'd affect my ability to dual-boot it. I'm starting to make a point of locking my work PC when I get up, and turning it completely off when I go home. I need to find a good program to encrypt my external hard drive. Any suggestions? I'm going to wipe my old MBP lappy clean of all data and then reformat it, and probably resell it for a bit of cash (after I replace the keyboard on it). I've changed all of my online passwords to much larger (and all different) versions, and am looking through several articles for other tricks and tips to improve my poor security habits. It's an incredible hassle to do all of this, and honestly I'm just a nobody with nobody data, but I do like the idea of keeping my nobody data safe.

As is always the case I'd love to hear if anyone's got anything to suggest about this kinda thing.

Hey guys, I got a room reservation for Anthrocon again, and don't need it because I'll just be rooming with FJ Cougar in his room reservation (because he's actually smart enough to reserve early enough to get a 2 Queen bed reservation). I, of course, was too late for that and got a 1-King bed reservation. So, like last year, I'm trying to get rid of mine. The reservation is at the Coveted Westin, which despite being coveted charges an entire night's deposit immediately.

Anyway, it's a reservation from Thursday until Sunday, 1 King bed, Westin (main) hotel. They haven't done the "fursuiter floor" thing in years but if you arrive early, you'll probably get a low floor. If you're interested, please let me know, I'll put your name on the reservation and you'll be able to check in without me being there. I can't remember if they reverse the charge on my card when you check in or not, so if they don't, I'll need to be paid back for the first night. Otherwise, whatever whatever!

I tend to be on and off with New Year's resolutions. I like to be specific, because specific things are falsifiable and you know where you stand. I have a few this coming year.


1) I'm going to return, recycle, or throw out most of my unnecessary books. I have hundreds of books that I pretend I'll read or finish reading, or reread -- but that won't happen and it's essentially hoarding useful information and wasting storage space.

2) I'm going to reduce my wardrobe. I have far too many clothes here, work shirts that don't flatter me, jeans that don't fit and are cut for youth which I don't possess, jackets I never wear and swordfighting gear I will not use presently. It all will be donated or returned to the house. I have never once been able to wash all my dirty clothes due to the sheer volume of them, and that is absurd.

3) I'm going to try to find the time to have some surgical procedures done that should've been done years ago. I have health insurance that I have never once used in 3 years, and my body cries out for repair. I only need to find the time off of work for recovery. This might have to wait until next year, although hopefully by then I'll have another job where time off is a possibility.....(pretty please with bacon on top)

4) I'm going to stop being the 'last guy to leave the party'. People are going to be seeing less of me, and so they'll appreciate the time they do spend with me a bit more. I enjoy the company of my friends, but I have essentially no free time, and I feel that I'm becoming too ubiquitous.

5) Yea yea I'm going to lose weight and get in shape. That's just bullshit and even I'm not so self-deluded to pretend that I'll actually do it. But I will be decreasing the amount of hair I carry around, on my head, on my body, and on my face. All I hear from people, both family and friends, is offhanded comments about how ugly people with a lot of hair are. I get it, I get it. Consider it gone (or mostly so, anyway). For a guy who loves to play with razors, I sure do find ways to keep hairy...but I'm going to scruff down this year, if only for an experiment.


I'm looking at a few choices also for buying things, hobby-wise:

For photography, which I've gotten back into this past year (to a degree anyway, mostly portrait and still-life things, instead of the action & wildlife genres I truly enjoy most), I received a new lens for Xmas, a Nikon 55-200 f4-5.6. Unfortunately I made a mistake in the note on my list and didn't put the "VR" in there, and I don't want a lens this slow and this long w/o VR on it. So I'm returning it, but for maybe 100 dollars more I could get the 55-300 lens. I haven't decided if I really need a 300 lens, and especially since for about the same amount I could get the 200 and a new SB-400 flash (my SB-24 is just not doing it for my D70, and I'd rather use it as a slave on my new lightstand anyway.

For Snowboarding, I sold the farm and bought all new gear, since all my old stuff was built for 12-20 year-old me, and in BR. But now that I'm going skiing around 1-3 times per week, I need to buy a board instead of renting one for about $50 per. I just haven't decided the camber and length yet. I'm just going to close my eyes and throw a dart if I can't rationally decide soon, though, at those rental prices.

Anyway, this draft's been sitting in my browser for a week now and I might as well post it. It's informative, if not technically...upbeat :)

It's Xmas time again, so if you know me you know that I will be unhappy roundabout now. I don't make a fuss about things but I get particularly depressed around this time of year and usually I like to just be alone so that I don't mess up anyone's Zen, especially if they're having a good time. I hate everything about Xmas except for the actual morning of it, when I can sit down in the living room of my mother's house with her and my sister and her husband and we just open a few gifts and are happy. And then we go visit the grandparents and eat a little and be happy. And then I go to the bar to see my friends and drink. I hate buying Xmas gifts, and have really started to hate receiving them lately too. I have pretty much weaned all my family off of giving me birthday presents, because I hate birthdays..but Xmas is Xmas and unlike my birthday, it's more than just me who gets a say in it. I waited too late to really get anything for anyone as well, so I suppose I'll be shopping like everyone else the next few days. I have to fly back to BTR on the 24th and back on the 28th. Anyway, Merry Xmas.

I bought a season pass to Liberty mountain snow-skiing resort this year and went snowboarding the other day. I haven't been on a snowboard since around 2001 so I was quite bad at it, as I expected. I damaged my ulnar nerve right at the medial epicondyle and I thought I may've broken my coccyx but as it turns out, I think I just ripped a section of sub-q fat away from my skin. It was painful and reminded me that I shouldn't be so proud of myself.

Winter is coming again up here, and it's always cold now. I hate the cold. I also don't like to bitch like an adolescent about things that don't change, so I won't post again until I have something upbeat to say. I hope everyone has a good rest of the year and feels happy. Maybe we'll get lucky and get another snowpocalypse so that the plowdrivers can make some money and I can play with my snow-shovel a little bit. That would really make me smile.

I really enjoyed FurFright this year.

I spent a great deal of time on my costume this year - that is to say, the costume which was worn by my costume. You might know of my "Boss Otter" fursuit, which I love and everyone seems to dig, but I went a step in the "War Dogs" theme of the convention to make Boss into "General Otter S. Patton" for the con. I ordered some WWII military uniform pieces, and originally tried to make it super-authentic..until I found out how much that stuff costs and how hard it is to get. So..I improvised a bit (a lot). He still looks pretty good, even if I took some creative license with him. I even had some WWII dog-tags made that say "Patton, Otter S", and hung one over my Boss Otter conbadge. I think I got a million pictures of him during the parade. Here's a couple :

( General Otter S. Patton )

Saturday, I was invited to a party at Steve's house, a costume party. I really didn't have a costume ready to go, so with the help of Oryx I got my old swordfighting, motorcycle, and paintball gear together, and made a passable riot policeman. I lent my nicest renaissance costume to m4 to wear with his new hyena fursuit, along with my custom type XIV sword in matching custom scabbard w/belt (very swank) and had a bit of a time getting it on him, but that's the price you pay for all those laces on everything. Oryx wore a football uniform he just bought. The party was mostly older people we didn't really know, so we just talked mostly to each other all night. Still, it was fun.. I always like to dress up, no matter what it's as.

Yesterday I went to the Boo at the Zoo at the National Zoological Park in Washington D.C. with Drakien, Kellogg, m4fox, CarribeanJag, Loki, Scooter Squirrel, WhitePaw, Blueberry Badger, and Seiko (and maybe someone else?). Traffic was a bit heavy near the zoo as it was a big event. Many hundreds of people there, lots of kids in costumes. But only 5 good animal costumes - a squirrel, hyena, dragon, collie, and skunk. We walked the length of the zoo a few times, so we probably walked more than 3 miles in our suits all said and done, with no taking off the heads, only a brief rest to cram a bottle of water in there for a drink. We got absolutely mobbed the whole time with kids coming in for pictures every time we stopped for a second. We did a few poses at the little Halloween setups they had, and hopefully got some decent pictures for it. It was dark, so lots of flashes in our faces. I soaked my suit through and through, and it got DIRTY. Way dirtier than I thought it would. Those kids had some filthy hands, I guess. I put it all on driers overnight, but today I'm going to double-wash my body before FurFright. It was a blast though, I always love to do fursuiting with groups of people. Hope we do it again next year.

My boss is out of town until Friday this week, so I can leave work a bit early to get ready for FurFright, which I desperately need to do. These past few weeks have been insane.

I finally got back from PDF about 30 minutes ago, just in time to be a bit late for work. I booked it around 8 this morning, before anyone else in Camp Furry got up. I hate to bug out before I can help break up camp, but I really had no time.

Thursday night was rather mellow, and it took awhile to find my way there, and was quite worried since I didn't have my ticket. But Agri was working the door then, so he could call over M4 to hook me up. I set up my tent and was ready within 10 minutes due to the pop-up tent, and always packing rather light. It was low-key since only some of us were there, and I zonked probably before 2.

Friday I bugged out early for work and left around 3PM, but still didn't get there until about 8PM, due to going home to pick up the bike, and getting stuck in godAWFUL traffic across the bay bridge (Ocean City traffic, I guess). On a Harley, that is NOT FUN. Oh, my hands. Riding at night is also not something I love to do. But I had my big fursuit bag stuffed with 2 suits, strapped vertically just behind me, which I've always wanted to try (no problemo!), and my new full-face helmet and chaps really made the cool wind more tolerable. When I arrived, I pulled the bike down in there to drop off, and holy canoli was Camp Furry in full swing. To be SFW I won't describe the attire or lack thereof going on, but me in full biker leathers (which I look very nice in, tyvm) was a bit overdressed, but I fixed it. I haven't had so much sugar in months, from what I got just from the liqueurs we were shooting all night. It was a fucking HOOT. Fun times.

I woke up Saturday and puked up some colorful contents. I found out later that some random guy had slept in an inflatable mattress right next to my tent, and I damn near puked on him, but..his fault in my book. I planned to go to work that morning, but was too hungover. We chilled out in camp and just were mellow. Made a store run and chilled out until night, when we set up the camp bar. We had hundreds of Jaeger-bomb shotglasses, with vodka in the middle and apple cider-cinnamon on the outside, free for anyone who came by, and they were flying off the table for awhile. We set up some jugs of liquor-punch through tubing and into some stuffed animals, like they were peeing the mixed drinks. 2 flavors, both gone by the end of the night. We put on our suits and dozens of glow-sticks and EL wire and went to the big burn, which was impressive, if a bit difficult to see with a suit head on. Afterwards we suiters wandered around, jumping on trampolines and doing ice-luge shots and having a nice laid-back time.

Sunday night was quite mellow. I left early and rode my bike Southward to home (and accidentally got lost ending up in DC :( ) but after work I got the truck and made the Northward trip (to the turnpike), which was about the same time-wise but way easier. I got in maybe 5PM and we just chilled for a bit, and then set up the mini-pony we made (a scaled-up version of one of those balsa-wood puzzle animals, done about 3 feet high in 3/4" plywood) for burning. We had a few drinks and dinner, and then 3 of us put our suits on and headed over for the burns. Oryx and Drakien lit it on fire with some accelerant, and the crowd seemed to really like it. We had people coming up to our camp and to the sculpture pre-burn and taking lots of photos, and telling us how much they loved it. The vets Really loved it, even asked to commission us to make them a big puzzle-eagle for permanent display at the campground, which was nice. After the burn we went back to camp and drank more, and played porno-Guesstures until about 3 AM.

I really enjoyed riding my bike on those roads, but I think next year I'll keep with the truck just to save the headache. Also, go the north route. And bring more things.. Still, though, great times even as they were; Excellent for my mental health.