Heyo, everyone.

How was everyone’s holiday? Mine was nice, and quiet. Perhaps a bit too relaxed, as I didn’t want to do much afterwards.

Spent Christmas Eve tidying up my apartment, and when I wasn’t tidying, I was holding a marathon viewing session of the 1995 anime series “The Vision of Escaflowne”. (It was that, or Evangelion. Since I’ve seen Evangelion in it’s entirety, I figured I’d go with a show I hadn’t completed.) It managed to distract me from opening my presents, well into Sunday night. So, what did I get? A buncha Gundams!

These were purchased from Gundam Store & More‘s Holiday “Surprise” sale.

19″ Gundam Stocking:

• Snacks
• Haro
• Gundam Wing Card pack x2
• Gundam Marker (lime? green)
• Gundam Pencil
• Shy-Tarn (V Gundam 1/144)
• Raider Gundam (Gundam Seed 1/144)
• Wing Zero Head Shooter
• Stocking

 Snack Pack

Gundam Surprise Pack #1:

• Nobel Gundam (G-Gundam HG 1/144)
• Brave Standard Test Type(Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer HG 1/144)
• Action Base 2 Clear Blue
• Paint Marker (blue)

Finally, my friend that runs Sonic Gear surprised me with a Transformers t-shirt, which has an Autobot symbol that changes color when exposed to sunlight, and a handmade Autobot symbol made with Perler Beads. So, great weekend all around.

Now we’re coming up to this weekend holiday, New Year’s. Has everyone figured out their resolutions?

I certainly have. Here’s mine, with alternates!

1.)Sort & organize collection (alternative: Work out a better cleaning plan.)

I moved quite a few years back, so I figure it’s time to get those toys out of the storage boxes, and on display (or out of the apartment) instead of letting them take up space, living in a box telling another figure to “Get your elbow out of my eye!”.

Alternatively, work out a better cleaning regimen. I’ve found quite a few times I’ve wanted to work on something, but would end up getting distracted by cleaning instead….which would somehow end up messier than when I started. sigh.

2.)Website (alternative: Complete other projects)

This should be first, but in reality, these aren’t ranked in any particular order to be honest.
Basically, get a more personalized look to the site, instead of how it currently looks.

As for the alternative, get more work done towards other products I have in mind, like learning how to program an iOS (iPhone/iPod/iPad) app, writing a story, or working up the courage to get on YouTube.

3.)Lose weight (alternative: Exercise more)
I’m pushing 30, and usually weigh in at 230 lbs. Need to get in a better shape. ‘Nuff said.

4.)Figure out a decent spending plan
This one makes it sound like I’m bad with money. I guess I can kind of see it, but I think I generally stay within my monthly budget.

However, I do get slightly sucker-punched by online pre-orders. Offline pre-orders aren’t too bad, as I can pay them off as the release date comes closer, but for online pre-orders, it’s all paid for at once. My plan to solve this issue is to get a prepaid spending card and put funds towards that card til it’s released.

5.) Go to Japan & complete Rosetta Stone.
Alternatively, complete Rosetta Stone for Japanese then go to Japan. Remember how I said I’m pushing 30 earlier? Yeah. I’ve wanted to go to Japan since I was in high school. That’s a well held onto ‘want’, so I want to do it before I hit 30.

6.) Read More.
I read a-plenty. Twitter, blogs, manga, cookbooks, occasional guides and how-tos…but not storybooks. I want to do this more. I’ve actually started this last night. I finally got around to starting “Howl’s Moving Castle” by Diana Wynne Jones. So far I’m only 2 chapters in, but I’m enjoying it.

Welp, I think that about sums up my major goals for the upcoming year. If you’d like to keep track of how I’m coming along on my resolutions, I’ve created a Resolutions page to follow along.

Hope everyone celebrates safely, and starts off the new year in a good way. I’ll see you guys in the new year!

If you’re visiting the site, and wonder why the layout doesn’t appear broken and blank, I found a nifty little trick to prevent this. As I’ve been updating my theme, I’ve found I can view a working preview of the theme underneath the “Appearance” > “Manage Themes” Tab, this way I don’t actually have to break the site to see what I’m doing. Neat, huh?

As to where I’m at on the WPDesigner tutorial, I’m up to step 5b, The Content. Retyping the code for the theme is a bit of a pesky process, but it’s having good results so far. When I left off the first time, W3′s validation service was validating my code with 13 errors. Now, I’ve been validating my code as I go, W3 initially reported 7 errors, and I managed to get those errors down 1! Wewt!

So, now that I’ve written in so my blog doesn’t worry about me, I better get cracking on the rest of the tutorial!  (If you’re wondering where Part 1 of “Adventures in coding” is, please consider “Hello world!….Again” the start of the series.)

I survived Black Friday with no anxiety attacks.  (Just a load of self-guilt for spending, when I said I was just gonna look about.)
Ran by Target to get a green tea from their cafe and wander about, checking out the crowd. Stopped by toys and spotted Air raid, Dark Steel, and Specialist(? or is it Rescue? it’s the Red one) Ratchet.

Kept to my no-spend statement, and headed over to:

Toys R Us:
Saw and picked up, breaking my no-spend statement:
Generations Sky Shadow
Generations Junk Heap
the last TF Prime Bumblebee (and dropped him into the Toys for Tots bin on the way out)- Not sure if I should feel like a dick for grabbing the last one off the peg(or the fact I basically emptied out their TF Prime peg in a matter of days), or not since they mostly went towards Toys for Tots.

and a small Lego Dinosaur set

Headed back to Target and…

Decided to get Air raid, Dark Steel, and Ratchet.

As I was reaching for Air raid, I was stopped by a guh-guh-girl! wanting to know the difference between Voyager and Deluxe was, and why I was getting Deluxes over the Voyager. I showed her the Fireburst Prime, and told her it was basically the size, and I was getting the Deluxes as they were newer. She then grabbed Air Raid before I could.   (She did offer to give me first dibs, but I figured I could find it later, so I let her take it.)

Finally, I decided to just stick with what I picked up at TRU, and just get the housepants I picked up at Target and put back Dark Steel and Ratchet, going over to look at the Lego sets. As I was leaving the toy section, I noticed the woman had picked up Voyager Fireburst Prime (the last Voyager they had) and was walking away from the toy aisle. Went back to Transformers, to see she put the deluxes she grabbed back. So, I grabbed the trio again, and made my way up to check out, so at Target I picked up:

Air Raid
Dark Steel
Ratchet

Though, while I was checking out and walking home, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should of left the deluxes in case the woman changed her mind again?

Also, when I came home, I had some packages from the mail waiting for me. It was last week’s Toys R Us order containing:

Transformers Rescue Bots Chase & Billy Blastoff
Transformers Prime Starscream
Transformers Prime Bumblebee

So, good hauls all around.

As said in the topic, yes, again. Sometime during the previous week my site was hacked.

So, now it’s back again. I’ve ditched the idea of doing subdomains, and using Zenphoto (which I suspect was the entry point for the hackers to take over, as Zenphoto reported a security issue that I didn’t get patched up in time) for my photography uploading. Now I need to figure out another way to host my images on site.

Also, for the next couple of days, the layout of the blog might appear to be broken. When the site was hacked, I was in the process of developing a new layout, using WPDesigner’s “So you want to create WordPress themes, huh?” (Published, 2007) as a tutorial. I made it so far as the Validation step, but couldn’t clear it with less than 13 errors, so the plan now is to start over, and validate each step, with a blog post ‘report card’.

After that, expect to see plenty of nifty reviews for toys, foods, and anything else I’ll be happy to talk about!