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costumes, toys and tech.


Oct 30
2009

So tonight I’ll be attending my first basketball game. I’ve never seen the sport played by professionals.

Of course, as with all things I do, I’ll be seeing it through the dark tinted lenses of a clone trooper helmet.

Cartoon Network is doing a promotion at the game tonight for Clone Wars. I’ll be there along with several of my strikingly similar looking friends doing… whatever it is Cartoon Network wants us to do.

Should be a fun time. There’s a chance we may go out on the court at some point. It’s only standing in the middle of 20,000+ people… nothing to be nervous about, right? ;)

I hear that there will be a green screen photo op area set up for kids to get pics with us.

In other news, the 501st was on the Today Show again this morning! I did not attend this event, mostly due to the previously mentioned Celtics game. Plus they already have a Rex, and it would have been too much work to whip up a plain white suit for the occasion.

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Oct 12
2009

i’ve been so bad about posting. stupid facebook and twitter… microblogging takes so little effort. the lure of the dark side is hard to resist!

at work i’ve been interviewing people for a helpdesk job. it’s going less than impressively thus far. i have 4 interviews this week i believe. yay. i’ve got high hopes for a couple of them. at some point, once i have someone, i’ll be doing a “how not to get a job in IT” post. for now, a sample:

  • send the hiring manager your resume with no subject, text in the message or attached cover letter.
  • send the manager an email asking how to get him/her a copy of your resume. you are applying for a tech job. if email attachments are beyond you…
  • tell the manager that the job looks boring and beneath you, but times are hard and you’ll take what you can get.

on the nerd front, the clone army is going well. we’re at 9 completed kits (myself excluded, so 10 total if you count me), and we have 3 more that are more than 75% finished. the next armor session should finish those three up.

it takes about 3.5 – 4 hours per suit, so do the math ;)

this is just the raw plastic. each person then has to put in the hours to trim / fit / assemble.

we are getting close to our big halloween parade, which is always fun. i’ve got a bit to do yet for it, but nothing big. i’ve got the minimums done for my own stuff, so anything new i make / do is gravy.

october 25, woburn ma. parade kicks off at 1. you should go. yes you. i know, it’s a long flight, but still… it’s fun. it’s worth it.

this time of year is always super trooping. i did a dk/lego promotion at the natick mall on saturday. this coming sunday is the boston autism walk. after that is the parade and a boston celtics game appearance (yes, mr. nosports will be trooping a celtics game!). i think there’s a week off, then it’s megafest in framingham. then it’s thanksgiving, with a parade that weekend.

oy. nerding is pretty hard core. you certainly don’t get bored…

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Aug 19
2009

My Captain Rex costume was just approved by the 501st! This is the first animated style Rex (or costume in general!) approved by the Legion.

Much like my Fett, it will be a long time before Rex is “done”, but I’m happy to have gotten as far with it as I have, and I’m proud to be helping to pave the way for future animated style clones.

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Jul 19
2009

We trooped at a Lowell baseball game yesterday. I’ll say more later, but for now I wanted to share this.

You just can’t get those sandtroopers clean!!

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Jul 6
2009

So, life’s been busy for a while.

Let’s go back in time to June 17, the last substantial update I made.

I took some time off between jobs to hang out, relax, and get refreshed. I did a ton of work on Clone and Fett stuff. The sculpt for the codpiece and butt plate are almost done, the Cody/Fox visor is done, and my Fett gauntlets are done.

On the gauntlet note, I negotiated a deal with a prominent machinist to let me recast his gauntlet rocket, which will allow me to make complete gauntlet kits.

Starting at the new job was, of course, a Big Deal. My first few days I just soaked in information. By the end of week 1 I started to feel more well oriented.

The long weekend at the end of the first week was nice. I ate WAY too much on the 4th, resulting in spending the 5th in crippling stomach pain. I got a lot of reading done.

Today I felt good, but had the sense to not go to the gym. I was pretty dehydrated and ate less than 1 meal on the 5th, so no working out first thing in the morning. Tomorrow I should be on track there. Did I mention the free gym at my new office? :)

I got the shins finished for my Rex suit, and put the whole contraption on for some photos…

rexedit20090704-1

I’ve also just about finished the Cody helmet.

photo

Related to all of that, I finally set up the Watch City Armory web site (which is just stormtrooperguy.com, but whatever ;) )

I also made a silly little movie about weathering armor:

It’s cheesy, but fun. Doing something like that with a real video camera would be good… that was recorded with my iPhone.

What else have I been up to?

I made some kick-ass coffee ice cream for Jodi’s birthday.

I haven’t seen Transformers 2 yet, but despite the terrible reviews, I’m going on Friday. Big Robots and Megan Fox. It can’t be worse than Megashark vs. Giant Octopus.

I’ve got tickets to see Alegria in August.

I’m going camping this weekend. In a friend’s back yard. Should be fun :)

Trooping on the 18th (maybe) and the 26th (definitely). Both baseball games. I don’t even like baseball.

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May 28
2009

So, as just about anyone reading this knows, we built a Jabba the Hutt puppet a while back. Full sized… quite the beast. And we made a little 15 second video clip of his tongue moving:

After a conversation at work about how more time has been spent watching the “history of dance” video than fighting certain notable wars, I went to look at the stats.

The Jabba video has over 77K views. At 15 seconds each, that means that over 13 days of human existence has been spent looking at Jabba’s tongue.

That’s just scary, sad, and sort of cool.

Speaking of Jabba, if you’re in NH come check out Granite State Comiccon this weekend on the 31st. http://www.granitecon.com/

We’ll be there, with Jabba!

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Apr 25
2009

We trooped at Star Wars Day at the Higgins Armory Museum today, and it was SO MUCH FUN!

It took me a while to figure out what it was… there were hundreds of kids there. Hundreds of well behaved kids, with their parents, who were there because they were super excited about the Star Wars stuff.

So as a result, rather than beating us with sticks, they were just psyched to be getting pictures with the Stormies, Jedi, Clones and Sith.

There were light saber demos, an armor making panel, and millions of photos. Well, it seemed like millions.

Rex was a crazy hit. This was my first time in an event as Rex with a lot of kids and me not just walking by. I felt like Santa Claus, but with pistols.

And the museum treated us so well… it was like if we wrote “this is what we’d love to have happen”, and they just followed it. They had food… breakfast and lunch. Drinks. Snacks. A changing room. A table in the main hall for us. Banners in the lobby. Free passes to come back and visit again.

Then after the event 2 members who live near the museum had a cookout / party, so we spent the rest of the night hanging out in their yard.

Overall, this is exactly what this sort of thing should be like all the time :)

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Apr 19
2009

Today was a fun day… we marched in the Arlington MA Patriot’s Day parade, our first time at that particular event.

It was a very tame crowd. Families, kids, the usual. After St. Pat’s any parade where sobriety is the norm comes as a surprise.

I’d say there were around 20 of us. A small group for a parade, but it was a smallish parade, so it worked. With R2-D2 and the landspeeder it was a good size!

It was my first time out with the latest set of armor revisions. The new belly armor looks good, though I need to adjust the fit a bit more still. I’m trimming little bits as I go, rather than cutting too much.

There will be tons of pics coming soon. I’m sure I’ll post again for that!

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