GenCon 2006!!
Originally uploaded by dalcher.

Here is a photo journey through the high points of GenCon 2006! I will post a longer review later, however you will see some very good things in here.

This past week has been hellacious to me… work has been driving me into the ground, and a laundry list of other social events have kept me out of the dojo a lot more than I would prefer in nice weather such as this. An appointment kept me late tonight, but I decided to get in one class in Mapleton.

It’s better than no class, as my beautiful wife says.

And it was. I got there at the tail end of the first class, in between the classes I did one Sochin kata so I could get Sensei Brewer’s input. He said it was coming along, and offered a few points that I need to work on. I’ve gotten a lot of good kata feedback from very good resources this week. It bodes well for the rest of the summer. 🙂

I’m starting to feel comfortable in the kata. Tonight was the first night that I felt stable throughout the kata, and my movements felt like they were gradually picking up power as the kata continued. I like that feeling, I hope it comes back frequently.

For the second class, we did all the Heian katas required for the people taking their test. We capped off the class with some three-time attack and three to five time attack. It was a nice, laid back workout that I really needed. Work has been taking it out of me and I find the dojo very cathartic and refreshing in times like this.

Tomorrow my wife and I make for Indianapolis and the beckoning maw of Gen Con! I will come back with a Flickr album and a lot of stories, I’m sure!

The wedding of and her new hubby went off without a hitch! The rehersal went well, apparently the pastor at their church got transferred a few weeks back and they had to break in the new guy that night so it went a little long. It was followed up by some trascendant Italian Beef from Portillo’s, so all was forgiven.

Earlier in the day, we had picked up my tux. I’m generally not too picky when it comes to clothes, but I was immediately alarmed by the Andes mint green of the vest. Luckily with the suit coat on it wasn’t quite as glaring. I would like to reiterate my affinity for Men’s Warehouse, their staff tend to go all out. The latest example of this happened that day… had forwarded a coupon along to spur us to get measured quicker, when I got measured the staff at the Peoria store told us to hold the coupon until we paid. We did so, and when we presented the coupon they told us we couldn’t use it. I got a call 15 minutes after we left from the store manager that was on duty and she had called their customer service line with some doubts about whether they should’ve honored it. They were supposed to, so I got a $20 credit on my card when I dropped the tux off earlier today. That’s service, people!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand… the wedding day was pretty low-key for all involved. Everyone was staying in the same hotel, so we travelled to the church in a big convoy of cars. The groom was cool as a cucumber all afternoon so I didn’t need to perform my Best Man Tackle that I had been working on. He was a little shakey during the ceremony, but that can be forgiven. 🙂 I lost a bet that was going to cry during the ceremony, she got her “game face” on as one groomsmen described and made it through with nary a quiver in her voice.

The reception was really great. One of the wait staff, Baltazar, did a fantastic job delivering beers to the head table. At one time I had three different varieties of alcohol lined up in front of me, which was good because I had to give the toast. I never plan for public speaking of this nature because I feel it robs the moment of the appropriate levels of emotion. I had known both and her husband since college and I was able to resist the urge to tell a few embarassing stories that I had about each of them. Instead, I told the tale of how I came to know that the two of them were dating (their origin story, which I related to both Superman and Spiderman)… a large surprise given I hadn’t known them to have 6 words with one another up to the point that they were holding hands watching Family Guy in my dorm room. I feel like the speech went well and nobody threw any fruit at me so I guess it was OK.

The rest of the night dissolved quite quickly into the open bar, the dance floor, and pleasant conversation. The reception actually broke up rather quickly with the exception of a group of around 30 people that decided to close out the evening. I’m very happy for my two friends that they could find real happiness like this, I hope that the years to come are good to the both of them.

I have to say, Sochin #1045 looks quite a bit different from Sochin #401 (big AVI files, be sure to be on broadband before attempting to download). Before you ask, the Pekin dojo also doubles as a daycare at the YWCA, we usually don’t train in Undersea Hell.

I will start with the things that I am pleased with. I feel as if the pacing of the kata is getting better. I will get to the details of where I continue to fail at this, but I think that the back half of the kata’s pacing is right on. I feel good about the power of the first high/low block. I am very happy with the way the strength and timing looks on pretty much everything after the crescent kick at the end. I love the way the outward blocks at the end are coming along, even though I’m hunching my back a little by that point. I need to keep my shoulders together and my butt under me, but I always wear out toward the end.

Now things that I don’t like. I HATE my hand placement on the second movement, and any of the other vertical knifehand techniques. Why didn’t anyone tell me I was blocking so low?!? Also, my Dad was right about the knifehand blocks in the middle of the kata… they feel correct to me, but they’re very obviously low half the time. I don’t think I do it consistantly, but in this kata my back knee collapses a little more than I would like, especially on the first side snap kick.

In all, I personally see I lot of improvement over the first video tape. This has exposed some things that I need to work on, so I suppose its onward and upward from here. I’ll be Osaka-Sensei someday, I just have to keep at it.

Anyone else care to share any thoughts?

Tonight’s workout was interesting. I was able to get nine Sochin in before class started, my plan to get my tenth out during warmups was thwarted when I was asked to lead warmups… or was it?!?

No, in fact, it wasn’t. I led the entire class through Sochin once, reminding them all that this was just to stretch their legs and get their limbs moving. They all made it through, including the group of white belts. I was a little surprised by that, so I decided to try a few lesser kata sprinkled generously with the rest of my warmups. I think we ended up doing 4-5 Taikyoku Shodans, we did two back to back. Everyone did good at it, I was pretty surprised at how glowy everyone was so I guess it was a successful warmup.

The first class was very basics intensive, which is something I need right now. Apparently something was bad with my technique tonight, because Sensei said that something was wrong with it but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. So he charged me with figuring it out, and left it at that. Hooray, another challenge. 🙂

In between classes there was some discussion going on so I knocked out six more Sochin. I secretly wanted to get to 20 tonight, but second class started up when I was two moves into Sochin #17 for the night. So I didn’t get to count it.

Second class was the rest of the Heian kata that we didn’t get done during first class, followed by some 3-5 time and slow sparring. I got across from for a fair measure of the slow sparring, we had a pretty nice go around. The pace was lighter and slower than we’ve gone for awhile, hence the title of this post… I was twitchy and nervous waiting for his trademark flurry of strikes, but they ended up coming at a lot looser of a pace than I am used to. So once again, my internal “don’t die” mechanism was preventing me from relaxing and letting my techniques fly. Once I got over it, I was able to hit with a few kicking combinations, but it wasn’t my A game. The all-Sochin diet does take its toll on some things, but I will survive.

Special thanks to Garls-san, who took a video of me doing Sochin #1045 for the archives. I’ll post it after I have a chance to take a look.

I have received the following email from PayPal resolution center! I win! Woohoo! Even if they are not able to recover any cash from this guy, this should be enough to get Discover to overturn the charge! w00000t!

==================================================================================

We have determined that you may be eligible for a refund on this PayPal
transaction. To qualify for a refund, just return the item in its original
condition to the seller. (You are responsible for shipping and handling
costs for the returned merchandise.) The amount you will be eligible to
receive is determined by the terms of our buyer protection policies and we
may be unable to make a full recovery of your payment from the seller.
Please review the buyer protection policies in our User Agreement before
shipping the item back to the seller.

[ ADDRESS REMOVED TO PREVENT INJURIES ]

Please log in and provide tracking information for the item you are
returning within 10 calendar days. The seller will also receive the
tracking information for this item. When the shipment is verified by
PayPal, the refund will be issued to you. If you do not provide this
information to PayPal, the investigation will end and the claim will be
cancelled.

You may also choose to cancel this claim if you wish to work directly with
the seller to resolve this issue.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Protection Services Department

I knew this past month was going to be rough on the karate goals, and after talking to tonight I decided to consult the spreadsheet. I ended up putting down 140 kata since the 1st of July, which is right in the midrange.

The monthly totals so far:
JAN: 125
FEB: 155
MAR: 222
APR: 123
MAY: 185
JUN: 90
JUL: 140

AVG: 148.57

I’m going to need to get moving! I may be doing some basement kata soon…

Because karate was cancelled due to the heat, I decided to further investigate why my MythTV was not providing its normal level of awesome side services such as VNC and Tomcat. This problem was compounded when I wanted to show some AJAX stuff that I had worked up and couldn’t because he could not hit my Linux machine.

I come to find out that I must’ve configured the new MythTV Fedora Core installation when I was having a paranoid nerdstreak… I installed and set up the firewall. I poked a few strategic holes in there for the services I desired and viola! I have my Fun Stuff.

I have a few other things I want to configure/test, but I’m pretty happy with the progress tonight!

Tonight I delivered the lame scam camera to Peoria Camera for a repair estimate. The young guy behind the counter was very receptive to listening to my plight and offered to take all of my documentation to the manager and he would perform the estimate for me. He said they would have to check on the legal implications of providing their professional opinion, but they were pretty certain they could help me out.

Hopefully they will get it done in time for me to pick it up before we leave on Friday morning, or else the timeframe for my PayPal claim may expire. Its completely up to them how much they provide (and whether or not they charge me!), but rumor has it that I’m in good hands.

Victory will be mine!!

Tonight, my cousin and I discovered that the regulation height for a dart board’s bullseye is 68″ off the ground. The regulation throwing distance is a befuddling 7 feet, 9-1/4 inches from the wall.

Fun fact from the article:

According to darts legend, regulation throwing distance was originally equal to the length of three wooden brewer’s crates placed end to end. The particular crates used to derive this measurement were from an English brewery named Hockey & Sons. Thus, the phrase “toeing the Hockey” came to mean stepping up to the designated throwing line. Eventually the line itself became known as the “oche” — based on the cockney pronunciation of the name “Hockey.”

These measurements placed my dartboard right at the top of the furnace room door and the line MUCH closer than we had been throwing from before. I will get some sort of indicator for the oche soon, and I’ll have myself a regulation darts setup. I love the Internet! 🙂