Some photos and stuff from the last week or so, because I am sleep deprived and it amuses me.

- lol geostigma nectarines (that was the second thought that crossed my mind, the first being 'ew, this nectarine has pus D:' - for some reason the juices from the bruises were seeping up through the skin to the outsides)
-My beatiful heirloom tomato display at work (I know, it would be more picturesque if they didn't have the code stickers on them)
-My awesome new phone

Also, Desai fills me with happiness and glee, thank you Kara ♥

So I got the HTC Magic today, and it is, in fact, magic. Unfortunately, I failed to save the contacts list on my old phone to my SIM card, so I had to redo them all by hand, which was not magic, but. It's done. Also yaaaay apps. I think I may have gone a little app-crazy, but I guess I can always par things down later. It also took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to mount the phone on my laptop to transfer ringtones and wallpaper over ('embarrassing' because it's outlined in the user manual rather simply, I just skimmed it and missed an important step), but I persevered, and I now have a Midgar wallpaper and an FF victory music ringtone, because I am a nerd.

I will probably post some photos of it later, but I've spent all day furiously RPing and flipping through Android apps and sites, and now I am sleepy. I also have an Earthdawn game to plan for tomorrow ffffff.

1) Con photos are up - general gallery here, photos from the Final Fantasy Fight event here. I will probably do a highlights post later, but for now, have me in a senshi fuku

2) Can someone confirm a quick and dirty Japanese translation for me? (And by 'quick and dirty' I mean 'I pieced this together out of the kanji I was looking up to transcribe and Babelfish'). It's the text at the bottom of the ShinRa ID badge, I _think_ it reads something along the lines of 'This certifies that the abovementioned person is an employee of the Shinra Company', but a slightly more accurate translation and a slap upside the head if I screwed up in my transcription would be lovely. Transcribed text is '上記の者は”神羅カンパニー”、及び神羅グループ
系列会社の社員であることを証明します', you can see a photo of an original here

3) My teeny cheapass Samsung is finally starting to bite the dust (the pick-up mic has died, which means I can't actually talk to anyone on it), and I think I may upgrade to a smartphone. The iPhone is super-sexy, but I don't want to sell my soul to Apple. I'm looking at the HTC Dream as an alternative, although I suspect Android has a lot less neat apps avalible so far. I'm also a little worried about the battery issue - dunno about the iPhone, but the Dream apparently goes about ten hours without a charge which seems like a lot, only I'm used to charging my Samsung about once a week >.>

4) I'm reading A Long Hard Road again. I may secretly hate myself. Also, I figured out how to read fic on my mp3 player 8D

-Final Fantasy Fight being surprisingly awesome and full of win, including Team Rocket actually winning, surprise Mudkip, the TF2 guys generally being sweet, and Zack nosebleeding at Yoko's jumping-jack attack.

-More assorted planning shenanigans, most of which end with 'and then Reno gets thrown out of the con'

-Awesome cosplay of the day: Argilla from DDS, an awesome Matt and Tai set (they had great wigs! I was full of shock and wonder)

I'm still sorting through my photos (I took around 500 at the FFF alone, although two thirds of them didn't turn out), but here's two awesome ones from Saturday night - one awesome because it's funny and the other awesome because it's amazing

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-Turks doujin! One old-school gen Turks one, and then one AC humor one, Rufus-centric

-Cute Neptune at the Sailor Moon photoshoot who wanted lots of pairing photos, which totally makes up for how hellish the boots were. Ugh, heels.

-Marluxia: "Mmm, smells like yaoi." *hipthrust*

-Assorted dinner shenanigans and planning for epic Turks group, including plans to have Reno slapped by half the con, and painting Shinra logos onto cheap fans so Reno can fan dance.

-Went to the dealers room, saw the Twinbells Doujinshi table (I've bought stuff from them at the last two cons, and been very happy with my purchases), made a beeline for it. The woman at the desk says 'Oh hey, I remember you! I don't think I have anything you'd like - OH WAIT! I have a Rufus doujin that I didn't bring with me, if I can find it tonight I'll bring it with me tomorrow for you.'

-Walking around outside with Justin scouting good places for night shoots, and as we come around to the entrance side of the building, a Sephiroth cosplayer spots me and shouts 'Rufus! I won! I FOUND MOMMY!' and points at the Jenova cosplayer next to her.

-Awesome cosplay finds - a Gale from DDS, a huuuuge (like...six foot diameter) black Mokona, creepy music box guy from Zelda, with the music box (the Song of Storms will haunt my mind the whole weekend), wicked Digimon group.

Also here, have some test shots of Rufus and Tseng 2.0

So! As apparently I missed a ton of cool people at Sakuracon - who's going to AE, what are you cosplaying as, want to meet up, and does anyone have a bathroom I can steal for half an hour at two pm on Saturday to change >.>

My cosplay schedule is looking like

-Rufus - Friday, Saturday morning and evening
-Super Sailor Uranus - Saturday afternoon, Sunday

So I told myself I wasn't going to cry when I watched the last episode of Stars. Boy, did I ever fail at that.

(I feel like I should say something deep and meaningful about the series, but my thoughts are pretty much split between 'OMGSOGOOD' and '*wibble*' at the moment)

So, at 9:30 this morning, as I was on the bus to work, my dad called me to ask me about furries. I am totally serious. I'm not sure what's more terrifying, the fact that my dad assumed I would know about furries, or that he was right. (Background to this - apparently some super-creepy dude my dad met while working a previous job several years ago has apparently been arrested on charges of pedophilia, and it turns out he's a panda furry).

To balance out that moment of utter weirdness, on my way to 7-11 on my lunch break to buy a bus pass, I found a five dollar bill all by it's lonesome in the middle of the sidewalk, so I used it to buy delicious organic fairtrade chocolate bars and shared with the rest of the department.

Also, you know you are a nerd when you are ripping concert DVD audio tracks from the commandline in Linux. It's actually fairly simple, but the order of chapter tracks on this DVD does not appear to be the same as the tracklisting on the case, and at least two tracks have disappeared off somewhere (it's an eight track DVD but attempting to rip higher than six results in a huge encoding of all the tracks). Still, omg omg omg, live VNV Nation = epic win (I bought Reformation 01 and seriously, one CD and one DVD of live tracks, and another CD of unreleased tracks and remixes was totally worth $20)