One man's crutch is another man's cane.

I find canes an incredibly cool thing. That is why I bought a wooden one at a garage sale, and made another out a branch (it was going to be burned!). Every now and again the fit will take me and I will walk around the house with one of them. I haven't yet had the courage/lunacy to go outside with them.....yet.

Though, when you consider that I have had this current cane spout for several days now, it might well escalate into a trip outside.

Why canes you won't ask? Well, it's just a strangely cool way to walk. And I have been watching several discs of House episodes back to back. Nothing puts one in a more caney mood than that.

However! I did always like canes even before I knew of the tv show. Call it my older brother, who loves canes, suits, and pipes, rubbing off on me. But hey, I was young and foolish, and since he was my older brother, he obviously knew what was cool. And if he thought canes were cool, then who be I to disagree? Especially if disagreeing was dangerous for my health.

One of the reasons my current cane binge has gone for as long as it has is that it helps drain some of the tension my neighbours give me. I can relax a bit when they are playing their ----- tv too loud by thinking of myself as a grumpy cripple who has no problem telling them a piece of his mind if it gets too much. That the theory anyway, or least, I think it is. Either way, canes are a cool thing.

License to Post.

After a period of uploading, uploading, and more uploading, I finally got my video from BrickCon up and running on youtube. It is really weird being a member of youtube. Not that I am actually going to do anything with my account. It was solely created so as to make public this video.

Seb at BrickCon

So here we have Sebastian Arts, from the Netherlands, Aliencat as he is known online, doing some advertising for the castle layout at BrickCon 2009.

Enjoy.

I gotta say, if a moon bagel was anywhere at the con, this might have the most likely.

I was framed!

So in that last post, I totally forgot to mention one of the most interesting events that happened to me at BrickCon. And I am not referring to the free Spongebob SquarePants Lego set I got, which, by the by, I shouldn't complain about, for Steve Witt would probably repeat himself and say, "I'm sorry your free stuff isn't perfect."

Anyway, I figured I might as well address an entire post to this topic. So on Saturday night at BrickCon, they had the blind build, where 20 people try and build a small set without being able to see it. I had my name down for it and was one of the ones selected. It was a cool thing to be in, with my adrenaline level rising every minute. We had half an hour to finish in, and for some unbelievable cool reason, I finished first, by a good 20 seconds too!!!

Unfortunately, I didn't win. Why you may ask? Because the next closest person had fewer errors than I did. For every misplaced piece you received a 10 second penalty, or something to that effect. This includes coloured pieces as well. So basically, the reason I didn't win was because I couldn't tell by feel if a piece was red or orange.

It makes perfect sense really. Why, all of the great builders can tell the moment they touch a piece what colour it is. I simply haven't master the craft enough to tell.

*Insert calming breaths*

Whatever, it's water under the bridge I guess. I'm not that sore of loser to complain on and on about not winning.

Still!

I do know that if I ever hosted a contest like that, I wouldn't make misplaced colours a time penalty. To me, doing that means that the outcome of the contest is determined as much by luck as by skill, which makes the whole point moot if you ask me. Why not just have the contestants randomly put pieces together, and whoever happens to come closest to the real thing win? Or why not just draw lots? If there was a tie, I could understand using the colours as a tiebreaker, but nothing more.

Sigh, perhaps I am a sore loser. But with as much right to be sore as any loser had. Oh well, such is life.

Thursday after BrickCon, (close enough)

So I guess I have no excuse not to post, now that BrickCon is over.

*Sob* BrickCon is over! (Insert many a tear here)

My flickr link to the pictures I took. Linky The pictures, especially of the people, are more than iffy, as to why, I can only speculate. My camera is just one of those relatively inexpensive credit card ones. For whatever reason it will only take stable pics on a tripod, regardless of what the iso is set at. It's weird. It does its job of taking pics of Lego well enough, but try and use it for it designed function and it sucks. Maybe next year I should borrow a higher end camera from a relative.

I did take a fair bit of video, which I am in the process of uploading, and provided I can figure out both youtube and how to rearrange my video, it will be posted online.

The pics save me any necessity of talking about the creations there. I will say though, that just like last year, I am inspired to build better and bigger again. Though I more than quadrupled my displayed area at BrickCon, as compared with last year, I still was a tiny contributor, when compared with some.

Socializing was way different than last year. I actually knew a few people beforehand, had a couple of planned events where I knew I could hang around, (CC supper, driving to the Lego store, picking up Beckie at the airport) plus, I shared a room with four other attendees. Two of whom, Aliencat from CC and his wife, I hung out with for a great portion of the Con. I must say, beforehand, I had more than a few misgivings about sharing a room, with other people period, much less a strange couple from Holland that I had never met, or for that matter, I don't think anyone had ever met in person. Yet, it was an unbelievable blast hanging with them. Also met a few more castle people who I hung out with, some of them quite frequently. I imagine the fact that I had already been to a Con helped out immensely with the hanging out aspects.

Spent a ton of money at the Lego store, both my own and the family's. Gonna be building sets for awhile. The drive up and down was pretty much a copy of last year's. Got varying amounts of sleep...stayed up later than I should have often as not, but I think I was more rested over all than last year. Maybe it's just because I didn't have the stress from driving in Seattle that I had last year. This time I knew which way was North just about all the time, and found the parking stall for the Con on the first try, and didn't have to loop around any. I also made my way to the airport, and back, hazard free. Much better than last time. I also wasn't as disoriented coming over the mountains. My sense of the north, and the compass's usually agreed with each other. And coming back to Kamloops on Sunday night, there was very bright moon that gave me a general idea of what kind of country I was traversing at the time.

Sigh, I can't believe it's over, and I really, really, really wish it wasn't. The wish made all the greater because when I went back to work, it was snowing. And it was snowing today, and I expect it to be snowing tomorrow. There was also a horribly cold wind, and just general suck. Winter has arrived, with no Autumn at all. Two weeks ago, we were breaking heat records left, right and centre. In Seattle it was nice weather, mostly sunny, and you usually didn't need a coat. I come back, everything looks fine. I wake up for work, and it's snowing and freezing my fingers off.

Sigh.

Oh well, that's the way it goes I guess.

Makes next year all that more anticipated.