San Diego Comic-Con 2013

You may remember we had a very limited experience with Comic-Con last year when we went to the Legend of Zelda symphony. It was overwhelming and traffic was a PITA bad but the kids really liked looking around and getting streetpasses on their Nintendo 3DSs.

During the time after that, I was trying to plan to get tickets which is not easy at all. The online system was awful and to sum up, I couldn't get tickets. Apparently a lot of other people had issues with system freezes etc and just a bad time. I did get an email for future one day sales which was fine but my priority is to find lodging. Hotels in the downtown area skyrocket and we searched for a place not too far or expensive. Hector found a reasonably priced Quality Inn off Miramar/I-15. We figured if we couldn't get SDCC tickets we can always cancel the hotel if we decided not to go.

Single day tickets sales came and went and I had my own online issues with that too but it worked out okay in the end. To cut down on transportation headaches, we drove to Qualcomm stadium and caught the trolley to the convention center. It took about 45 minutes but it was really easy.

We drove down to San Diego Thursday morning and I chose the I-15 which was nice and traffic free. We tried to drop off our luggage at the hotel but no little extra room to store it and no clean rooms yet. I understood the clean room situation but no storage space?

For Thursday, I was only able to get a badge for myself but Josh could tag along with a paid adult. I think Tyler felt a little left out when we went to check out the exhibit floor but we left him in an extremely entertaining area at the Marriott called the Nintendo Lounge. Nice big area with a couple of areas with beanbags and 3DS chargers along with lots of demos, picture areas and lots of fellow gamers. I don't think he missed us at all. When we came back, he was loaded down with all sorts of goodies...meanwhile, Josh & I wandered only a small area of the exhibit floor that I thought was crowded but I was wrong. When we went back inside on Sunday, that was CROWDED. There was staff trying to direct the flow and keep it moving.
I ended up holding Josh's hand practically the entire time so he wouldn't get swept away...

The area outside the convention center was probably more entertaining for us because the crowds were not so tight and wait times were not too bad. The con has grown larger than life and there is no possible way to see/experience everything but the things/events that we managed to see, we were really happy with them so to sum up, Comic-con is what you make of it.

Photoset from Comic-Con 2013

We stayed an extra night after the whole Comic-con was over to hopefully beat the traffic ( still had traffic) but we made a side trip to La Jolla before heading home.

The water and weather were gorgeous. Over the weekend we had some overcast, cooler temperatures which was nice when dealing with masses of people but we got to have the pretty, stereotypical California weather too. :)








My silly boys.



With views like this, who can be sad???



Seriously, everything was postcard perfect.



The water really was this blue...

The beautiful end to our fun filled long weekend. :)

ipod help

All my music in the entire world is on my iPod. My computer crashed a few years back leaving me with just one device holding my entire CD collection and purchases. I couldn't figure out where/how/what to do so fast forward to now and I decide to google my dilemma since someone surely has figured out the answer and posted it on youtube. Well, I was right and I'm following along so far so good.

And this is what happened to my older ipod...




It was acting up lately not charging in my alarm clock/player, the click wheel was frozen so I could operate it but the function buttons on my clock could at least get it to play. But then I noticed the corner popped off and it's not working. It served me well for about 10 years which is pretty darn good. :)

Still copying all my music to a folder so stay tuned...


OMG, it worked!! My entire library that was on that ipod is now transferred successfully to my computer. So happy now....

Here is Youtube link.

Canon A1: Sunset at the beach

I shot some more film and turned it into Costco for processing. There is one film Kodak pro something or other that I had the most awful time loading. I had shot the entire roll (I thought) at Fossil Falls but it never loaded. Okay, I though I might be able to salvage the film and learned via Google how to retrieve the film leader with the good old saliva method ( it does work too). Reloaded the film and thought I shot the roll no problem.

Well, Costco told me the film was blank so either I exposed the roll somewhere or it didn't load again. I had one roll that came out and from the photos, the sunset/beach photos looked really good. But the DVD wasn't included which I paid $3 for so I called and there was a mix up where another customer got my DVD and hers was still at Costco. Took another day for that person to return my DVD but now when I look at it, I'm not sure if it is worth the money.

I thought the DVD would be a better quality than my scanner but it doesn't seem to be the case. Lots of grain when the photo is enlarged on the computer so I think I will try to do an enlargement on one of the photos and see for myself. I do want  an enlargement for my home and display purposes.


Now to decide which one to enlarge...


Photo #1




Photo #2



Photo #3



At least Costco is reasonable for photo processing although I may have to look for other options once I get more serious about my photography.

So what photo shall I reprint?? I'm thinking 5 x 7 size.