Tag: travel

Photos: Otakon Vegas

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Otakon Vegas was somewhat of a testing ground for me, being the super-n00b novice picture taker that I am.  I’m almost naive enough to believe that simply equipping a prime lens and utilizing an external flash will yield better results, but obviously, that most certainly was not the case.  In all honesty, and as much as I hate to admit it, almost 30 pictures were deemed unusable, and not worth posting at all, for a varying reasons, and never the reason of the subject(s).

Anyway, I didn’t really take that many pictures at the convention itself, and frankly I didn’t want to drag my camera out on the Strip or during my gambling escapades, because with it’s upgraded accessories, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to lug around for anything other than appropriate picture-taking times.  Aside from taking a few pictures of some select costumers, I apparently took a ton (no pun intended) of pictures from the sumo wrestling exhibition, and on Sunday, I chauffeured tagged along on an external shoot that was outside the city limits in Red Rock to close out my picture taking endeavors.

Regardless, I hope these are somewhat enjoyed, and to the maiden crop of people whom I shared a photo card with, I hope you guys are pleased with the pictures of you guys I took.

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Thoughts about Vegas and Otakon Vegas

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but somewhere along the line, I caught something and I’ve been home sick for the last two days.  I do not get sick very often, so needless to say this doesn’t please me in the least bit, but there’s nothing I can really do about it.  However, it’s given me a little bit of extra time to catch up on processing some of the photos I took while out in Vegas, as well as some time to do some writing.

It’s been like two years since I was in Vegas last, and it’s safe to say that there have been quite some numerous changes since then.  One of the conversations had during the trip was about how Vegas was obviously one of the larger casualties of the last economic massacre, and it’s in little things that I think I notice that such an assessment is true.  A few years ago, casinos were extremely generous with coupon books boasting all sorts of match-play tickets, buy-one-get-one tickets, and other offers to stimulate parting money from your hand to the hands of the casinos.  Typically, these were given upon check in to hotels, or upon registering with a different player’s reward program.

Two years of inactivity and returning to Vegas used to warrant some sort of offers to help make up for money of mine they haven’t been getting but neither redeeming new cards, or checking into the hotel prompted any sort of offers of sort.  To me, it’s not a big deal, since I hardly used anything other than BOGO drinks, but the lack of offers wasn’t lost on me either.

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I want a real vacation

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Several times throughout the years, I’ll take vacation time and go somewhere and do things.  Despite the fact that I’m generally accomplishing things that I want to do on my vacation time, I don’t really feel like they’re really vacations in the sense that I’m completely relaxed and at a general state of ease and comfort.

When I go to a convention, there’s the agitation of constantly being in lines and being crammed with thousands of people at any given time; waits, more waits, lines and waiting in lines, the tedious procedure of trying to find a place to sit and eat lunch or dinner.  When I go on ballpark trips, they’re usually not spent very long in any one place, and in order to maximize how much time gotten at each park, and there’s a lot of time spent driving around in cars trying to get from point A to B to C to D and then back to A sometimes.  And then there are the unfortunate instances of having to use vacation time to go deal with family bullshit, where I feel like I need a vacation after each and every single day dealing with my parents’ separation.

And no matter where in the United States you go, there’s always a long line at Starbucks when all I really want is my morning cup of coffee.

Don’t get me wrong, aside from the family bullshit, I enjoy going on trips to go to conventions, baseball road trips, out-of-town weddings and other time-off-work excursions.  I wouldn’t trade any of those things in for the world, but the fact of the matter is that more often than not, none of those things are truly restful, not-a-care-in-the-world, zero-worry, genuine vacations.

So I kind of want to go on an actual vacation, sometime.

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A late night urge to write

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Oddly to say it, but it’s been a while since I made a post like this.  If it’s not obvious, I tend to do a lot of my writing well in advance, and post them on a daily basis, to give off the impression that I’m churning out brog posts on a daily basis.  I hate to kill the reality, but that’s not always entirely true.  I still contend that I’m the most dedicated blogger I know as well as out there, since I’ve been doing this regularly for over twelve years now, but this is a little glimpse into the reality that is my own.  I write pretty consistently on a daily basis, but there are stretches of time where I actually don’t have the time to write something, every single day.

Anyway, this is something I haven’t done in a while; a post where I’ve started writing with little or no real objective, and where I’ll actually hit “post” upon completion or when I don’t feel like writing anymore, and it will go up in at real of time as there ever is, instead of hitting “save as draft,” and saving it until Monday, because I tend to not really do much, if any, writing over the weekends, because I’m lazy like that, and frankly people don’t really use the internet on weekends aside from needs, sports scores, or Facebook; along those monotonous ways.

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Real Men Don’t Wear Small update: Triple-A minors trip

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After what’s felt like quite a while in between baseball trips over the 2013 season, I’ve finally updated my ballparks website again.  Unfortunately, it isn’t a Major League ballpark to take off of the list, but it’s instead four Triple-A minor league ballparks visited and covered.  If this keeps up, I’d have to consider breaking off a section for just the International League, but then again, I’ve said the same thing as it pertains to the teams in the Carolina League as well as the Southern League.

RPG logic in real life

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A funny thing happened while I was out in New York once.  My friend and I went out to the small town of Auburn, to try and catch the last of the minor league games we had planned to see, but several hours prior to the game, it began raining, and raining steadily.  At this point, it really began to look like the game was in jeopardy, but since we had come such a long way, we wanted to wait as long as possible, or for the team to officially cancel it before we made our next move.

There was a little bit of frustration as the rain continued to come, and make it look obvious, but not being from the area, we still weren’t completely sure on whether or not to get the hell out of dodge yet, or wait on.  But at this point, we needed a place to kill some time and not putter around out in the rain and waste gas.  So we went to a nearby bar.

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(Upstate) New York state of mind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s kind of weird for me to mentally go back in time a little bit to be writing this post, but it was a pleasant enough of a trip to where I knew I was going to eventually write something about it, but time permitting, I simply didn’t have the opportunity to write when I got back.  However, being the reminiscing nerd that I am, I actually jotted down notes and blurbs about my recent travels through upstate New York that I figured I wanted to address when I had the opportunity to.

As for all the pictures I took in New York and Pennsylvania, I’m not sure how many people would be remotely that interested in what were primarily baseball photos, except for maybe some scenic stuff in Rochester, but anyway, I actually back-dated the posts to the dates of their original trips, and posted them as well.  Obviously, they’re also available in the “photos” section of my site, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure how many people actually use that function.

The weekend prior to the insanity that was Dragon*Con, I actually spent four days traveling through upstate New York, on my annual baseball road trip with my boy Huzzard, a tradition that has gone on strong for the last six baseball seasons now.  In lieu of an expensive Major League road trip where we could see like, one new ballpark in a major city, we decided to traverse the lesser-driven roads of America and see several minor league ballparks, which we both tend to agree are more rewarding, and frankly more economically efficient.

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