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Almost two weeks ago, I knew that Kollision Con was going to be a nice small con with a chance for fun and a break from a very very busy week. Looking back, I’d say that in a lot of ways, Kollision Con more than met my expectations. It was a small con with more than a few very tasty nuggets of fun mixed in!
I had to work on Friday which is unusual for me when cons come around, but since checkin and parking at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles wasn’t available until after 4pm, it didn’t matter. I packed my costumes and supplies in two bags, stuffed them in the trunk and went to work just like any other day. After work and a drive from Chicago that seemed to take forever, I arrived at the hotel and was able to get parking that turned out to be close to the room I would have for my stay.
I didn’t do that much on Friday except fret about my costume before working up the energy needed to get it ready and go sing at Midwest Karaoke Madness. Even after 5 years of cosplay, I still need a minute or two to cross the initial threshold. Oddly enough though, I have no trouble getting up on stage! Once I got out, I was pleased to see a number of familiar faces from Youmacon, Ohayocon, and of course, ACen!
My goal for the weekend was singing karaoke, concerts, and seeing the guests. So Friday night karaoke was a great start with Shizukana Yoruni, followed by Unwritten a little later. I still remember singing Unwritten at the last Reactor convention with just me and Neo Saturn in the room wondering if anyone else was ever going to show up. I started poorly, but with emotion welling up inside of me, I had a strong finish. More than singing myself though, I really enjoy watching others perform as well and singing along to everything from Mulan’s I’ll Make A Man Out of You, to Cee Lo Green’s Fu*k You!
As usual, I got out an hour late on Saturday morning, missing opening ceremonies. But I did get to see voice actress Jamie Marchi who even complimented my Uhura cosplay as I came in, yay! I’ve been improving my Uhura since its Otakon debut in July and it’s still my favorite right now. So with that encouragement, I later registered for the craftsmanship competition of the masquerade. The judging was done right at sign-up and I had a good time explaining all that went into the costume as well as things like makeup and shape wear. I think the fun I was having actually helped me a bit later at the masquerade, but I’ll have to go into that when I finish this up in the next installment!
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With the holiday and the promise of some good bargains this weekend, I’d been revisiting my plan to build a new gaming PC. The guys I work with are big gamers, so I’ve been looking to up my playing time.
I had initially thought about building a new rig last year in order to play Final Fantasy XIV, but by now, anyone who follows gaming knows how big of a disaster FFXIV proved to be. Square Enix is still hammering out the bugs, but it still isn’t ready for me to take that plunge.
Since that time, I’ve been playing Star Trek Online, which has been fun, but just not the same experience that I had with FFXI. I really missed Laureta, my main character there and the world itself. So while cleaning up my old PC and optimizing it for the games it can play, I decided to see if I could get my old characters back. I also wanted to see if SE had a payment system compatible with the way I wanted to pay.
Long story short, I’m back! It took nearly 4 hours of updates, but I have returned to Vana’diel! Swinging a sword with Laureta has never felt so good!
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It was never easy being black and being a NASCAR fan, but I loved fast cars and the colorful personalities of the racers. Many a fan will tell you that the quality of the competition has suffered for a variety of reasons, and viewership is in decline. I started getting bored with it once Jimmie Johnson started walking away with one championship after another.
But in the end, the thing that ultimately made me turn off the TV were the racist fans. During the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaigns, the hostility towards Barack Obama, solely because of the color of his skin, the same as my own, from NASCAR fans and the right wing leaning teams, drivers, and the organization itself was just too much. I just couldn’t bear to watch anymore on TV. And my dream of attending a race in person was abandoned. Why go somewhere where people will hate you?
Still, I’d keep an eye on the races, albeit only through Monday morning news articles on the web. But booing the First Lady, Michelle Obama, is the last straw. I’m done with you NASCAR and your pig-headed, racist fan base.
One of the marks of a good weekend is that it makes it hard to get back to work on Monday, in a good way of course. I went to the 2nd KollisionCon this weekend, and while the con was somewhat smaller than I had hoped for, I had fun nevertheless. I’ll write more about that later. For now, I’m looking forward to getting back to work on both my development work and book writing projects!
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