Monthly Archives: December 2015

Thanks to 2015 and everyone who made it great

This was quite the year filled with many fun activities. It seems like a nice time for some reflection. I went to Michigan, which was beautiful, with Duncan. I’d never been that far north or east.

On that same trip, I left the country for the first time to visit Niagara Falls.

I also visited Toronto! It was an awesome city.

I went to San Diego Comic-Con again. Here I’m dressed as an Aquabat with Holland Tayloe Gedney’s Elsa.

It was also my first year cosplaying – not counting the Aquabats costume I’ve worn to SDCC previously for concerts. This is Professor Monty Corndog from the Aquabats (with the Aquabats)!

And let’s not forget Fix-It Felix, Jr.

I visited friends in the Bay Area when I went to San Francisco for a conference.

I did a lot of yoga, including paddle yoga. I started practicing yoga in the summer of 2014 and continued in 2014. Starting in June, I did yoga daily, never missing a day. I took over 130 yoga classes in 2015. My wrist is still healing but is feeling much better. I think the glucosamine sulfate (thanks to the pianist from Intergalactic Nemesis for the suggestion) and vertical mouse is helping quite a bit. I also hurt my knee, so for the past few months I’ve only been doing restorative or yin yoga. Honestly, I can see the good in this. I’ve learned to appreciate yin and restorative so much more, which helps give me a deeper understanding to my practice and myself.

Speaking of hurting my knee, I’ve also been dancing a lot more. I took 40-something dance classes this year. While I tried a lot of different areas, I like Balboa, Argentine tango, and Lindy Hop the most. I’m glad I have fun friends who like to go dancing.

I baked an ooey gooey berry pie for Anela to celebrate the fact that she passed the bar. I also got to attend her bar admission ceremony and law school graduation.

gem and I went to the Dapper Day expo at Downtown Disney and to Folly, the afterparty.

gem and I were extras during the filming of The Big Day, and gem got this great photo of her with Suburban Legends.

I saw so much talent in my friends. This is Free Comic Book Day show at ImprovCity with my friend Alex Bower front and center. Besides some regular shows, I saw him in Scary Pants (which he wrote), Millennial Falcon at Second City, and HIStory/HERstory.

Speaking of talented friends named Alex, I saw Alex Foster clowning around and got pulled on stage for more participation (just like the last clown show I saw before this one).

I painted a little Jimmy the Robot.

I also painted this Adventure Time mug.

You have to see both sides.

That’s not to mention the cool Christmas gifts and cards I made this year. I haven’t given them all to their recipients yet, so I don’t want to show anything.

gem took me to a sushi class where we prepared sushi rolls! She’s the best 🙂

We also saw Kindred Throats, an amazing musical comedy duo. She liked them so much, she baked them cookies. Twice.

I attended Anela’s law school graduation from Chapman.

…and her CA Bar admission ceremony.

gem and I saw Cirque du Soleil’s KURIOS! Amazing!

I saw Anela dance a number of times, including the really fun Bellydance IDOL presents Om Kalthoum Tribute Show.

I helped solve a mystery at the Watson Adventures.

I ran (jogged/walked) a Blacklight Run with these two fun people.

I even got to see snow for the first time.

Heck, the year even started with my friends getting engaged.

I did so many other cool things too such as…

Reading all surviving plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that I hadn’t read previously.
Having agents draft social media responses for me at work
Participating in a behavioral study
Becoming friends with Bryan Lackey, awesome ska trumpet player
Wakeboarding
Watching my brother perform in the Spectacles Improv Engine’s Student Showcase
Seeing a meteor shower
Attending a sand sculpture festival
Jogging/walking a Blacklight Run
Running the Walking Dead Experience
Seeing bands such as the Aquabats, the Interrupters, Starpool, Suburban Legends, LA Swing Barons, Imagine Dragons, Metric, Halsey, the LA Philharmonic, and Scott Bradlee and the Postmodern Jukebox
Vacationing with my roommates and friends in Vegas
Swing dancing in Downtown Disney
Visiting the OC Fair and OC Night Market
Watching Rocky Horror Picture Show
Lots of blogging (see my earlier post)

And I’m sure I’m forgetting to mention a thousand things. Thanks to everybody who helped make 2015 such an amazing year.

2015 blogging in review

Thanks to some reminders from WordPress and Jetpack, it seems like a good time to look at blogging in 2015. They’ve put together a report you can look at here, but I think I can find some interesting numbers myself.

WebPageless got around 4000 views this year, which is approximately what my other two blogs, Kor’kron 501st and Polygons and Pixels got as well. At this point, WebPageless is the only one I update regularly; the other two are about games, and I’m not really gaming much.

Here’s the breakdowns by year:

Year	WebPagleess	Kor’kron 501st	Polygons & Pixels	Total
2012	Unknown	5,969	N/A	N/A
2013	2,949	10,181	6,858	19,988
2014	3,703	6,376	7,891	17,970
2015	~~3,989~~ 4,002	~~4,793~~ 4,797	~~4,027~~ 4,029	12,828

I don’t know when Jetpack was installed on WebPageless, but it shows data for January 2013, so it must have been installed that month. January might be a little low depending on when it was installed in that month, but that’s early enough in the year that it seems fairly accurate. Also, 2015 is only off of 4,000 by 11 views. Maybe this post can push it over 4,000. Edit: It can!

I’ve also been tracking with eXTReMe Tracking on WebPageless since May 7, 2009. It tracks visitors, not views, and its calculations can be different than WordPress’ too. While it doesn’t give me as much data as I get from WordPress, as of writing this it gives me a total of 19,858 visitors.

I made 67 new posts here – much, much more than my other two blogs. I made 34 new posts on Kor’kron 501st and 28 new posts on Polygons & Pixels. That’s not really a surprise to me. Most of my posts on WebPageless are discussing cool things I’ve done, and I’ve done a lot of fun things this year.

I know the views on WebPageless are much lower, but they’re more important to me. Kor’kron 501st and Polygons and Pixels have a much stronger ability to get views from links or search results, but WebPageless is actively about me and my life. However, all three blogs get views from people I know personally, and that means a lot to me. WebPageless is such a chronicle of my life that I’d ask someone to save a copy of it if I died to give to my children, but, you know, no kids, so we’re all good. Thanks to Blessing of Kings for linking to Kor’kron 501st and being responsible for so many of my views, the Twisted Nether Blogcast for having me on their podcast in late 2014, and everyone following the story of bob’s game on Polygons & Pixels and commenting to keep me informed – Nox, Tubero, Anonymouse, and more. Most of all, I’m thankful and surprised when my friends reveal that they read. It’s harder to gather stats on people who click through from Facebook, but I see the likes. I’m surprised so many people read. (Well, and some people like without reading, I’m sure.) I get comments in person from people that reveal that they’ve seen the post. It’s amazing. Sometimes I find myself asking “does anyone even read this crap,” but I know they do, and I know that WebPageless is basically a journal. If you read it, it must mean you care about me. Thank you.

Excluding the home page and some more administrative-focused pages designed mostly for me, here are my top posts by views in 2015:

I’m sure I’ll keep blogging in 2016, so I’ll see you then! (And full disclosure, I’m planning on another post later today here.)

The Big Day and Suburban Legends

A few weeks ago, gem and I went to see Suburban Legends at Lake Forest Palooza. While they were playing, I ran into Tazy!

gem and I also danced with All the Way Jay of the Maxies! It was his birthday!

I had to get my photo with the legends themselves too!

On a different day, I was an extra at a filming of a movie called The Big Day. Suburban Legends did some music for the movie, so they were there hanging out. It was pretty awesome. We even got to be in a promotional music video!

gem wins the awesomeness contest though for getting a picture with the band… with her ukulele… on stage! Yeah! I don’t want to post it because she should get the pleasure of sharing it herself. Fun!

My Merry Christmas

My Christmas was certainly merry, and I hope everyone else’s was too. This is my little Christmas tree. I hadn’t put the homemade ornaments on it yet, but I forgot to get a photo with them and the gifts. Whoops.

This is at my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve. We do our main celebrating and gift exchange on Christmas Eve, while Christmas day is more relaxed. This photo was just my generation of the family. That’s my cousin Haley on the left, my cousin Mitch under his gifts, and my brother on the right.

Here’s another of Mitchell. He’s pretty awesome.

Now I’m standing with my grandma, my aunt, and my mom. My grandpa is on the right.

Here’s one of me and Pete. He’s trying to hold up a photo on his phone he took of my grandma’s butt.

What happened to grandma’s shoe? Weird.

Here’s a couple gifts from gem! She gave me a Bluetooth speaker, a set of bear sheets (I can’t wait to get into bed tonight), and a ukulele! Amazing! I brought my ukulele with me today when I went to my parents’ for Christmas day to practice. I’m trying to play Martian Girl by the Aquabats. Yes, gifts from me are missing from this post. I’ll talk about them some other time!

Lindy Christmas was a lot of fun

Last Friday was Lindy Christmas at Atomnic Ballroom, and it was a lot of fun. I met Carrie, Edward, and gem before dancing for dinner. After we finished, we all headed to Atomic where we met Jessica for a 6-count Lindy Hop class. Once the class ended, the Lindy Christmas dance started featuring the LA Swing Barons. Edward and Carrie didn’t stay too long, but Jessica stayed with us.

At 9:30 we headed to the other room for a free tango lesson and practica. I’m glad Jessica tried both! She seemed to have a good time; hopefully she did.

Santa even showed up for some dancing apparently! I didn’t see him at the dance, but I saw him in photos later. It was a good time!

Happy birthday, Michael

Happy 30th birthday, Michael! He had a fun birthday party this weekend, but he might have had a few too many shark shots (4-ish oz shots). He did give a pretty sweet birthday speech though.

Also, we had some romantic alone time on Michael’s bed.

Christmas musical and party

This weekend I met an alpaca. I’ll get back to that.

The Compass Kids of Compass Bible Church performed The Loaned Manger this weekend, and gem’s nephew, Micah, was one of those kids. We saw the first performance, and it was a lot of fun. Some of the kids were super talented! We even got to sing some Christmas songs before and after the show.

Here’s one of the songs.

There was a petting zoo outside, so after the musical, we got to hang out with some animals. This camel was pretty cool, but he really wanted my coffee.

gem met the tortoise and the hare! I guess the hare won the race, because the tortoise didn’t really move.

I might be blurry, and he might be derpy, but I still like this photo.

Here’s gem with the alpaca too!

This weekend was also my friend Demian’s annual Christmas party! I had a blast, and I ate a ton. Rice Krispy Treats are good, but have you ever had Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries treats? Wow. Also – pickleback shots! They’re a shot of whiskey chased with a shot of pickle juice. Pretty delicious actually.

The party was also a good time to sing The Twelve Days of Christmas. Pete made these signs about twenty years ago, one for each day of the song. Singing was a family tradition. Everyone sings the song until it comes to a day and then the person with the sign sings his or her part. For example, we’d all sing “on the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,” and then I’d sing alone, “ten lords a-leaping.” Unfortunately, less people are coming to our family Christmases, so we don’t get to do it. It went over really well at the party though!

gem even accompanied the singing on her ukulele. It was so cool! It was a great party, and it was also cool to catch up with friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while.

Chapman Law Bar Admission Ceremony

Monday evening was the Chapman University Fowler School of Law State and Federal Bar Admission Ceremony (what a mouthful). I chatted with a nice couple who was there to support their nephew as well as a woman on the other side of me there for her daughter’s friiend who was like family.

I texted Anela to turn around for a photo. She didn’t see the text, but she turned around right at that time anyways and looked my way!

Technically this is a photo of Anela taking the oath even if it’s not the best angle.

Todd Friedland, Esq., President-Designate, Orange County Bar Association gives some remarks. I actually found myself thinking “he’s a really good speaker” before realizing “of course he is.”

There are technically two Anelas in this photo.

Yay!