The perils of winning

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I asked the wheelchair-bound man if I would be bothering him if I took some pictures while kneeling beside him.  He said that it wouldn’t be a problem at all.  I knelt down and took two quick snaps of Freddie Freeman fouling off pitches, and then an usher was on my ass like it was delivered from the sky like in Sharknado.  Telling me I couldn’t take pictures there, I couldn’t stand here, there, and that I needed a ticket.  I could have questioned him, but it was pretty clear from the onset that black-man-on-a-power-trip was going on, so it wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere.  I simply said okay, and left.

Earlier in the evening, and I use the term evening loosely, considering it was 5:15, almost a full two hours prior to the first pitch, sunny and beautiful, and with less than 300 people in the entire stadium.  I politely asked the usher in 103 if I could go down to the bottom of the section to snap a couple of pictures of some players taking batting practice.

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Photos: Experimenting at the Ballpark

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve felt like taking pictures.  With the baseball regular season coming to a close, I figured that there couldn’t be any better time to play around and experiment with my camera than by taking it to the ballpark.

Honestly, I hardly cared about the game at all, since I was more or less there to sate some reminiscing urge to see the ballpark off one more time prior to the start of the post-season, which I’ll in all likely avoid attending (due to egregious gauging), to get a bobblehead from an acquaintance, and, to take pictures.

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It kind of makes me feel a little old(er) but still, lolz

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today is one of those days where I don’t really feel like I have anything really good to write about.  On any given day, I like to try and have something floating or swirling around my head to be able to turn into something of a substantial brog post.  I kind of had an idea about writing about eulogies and something that would kind of come off sounding morose and a little bit towards the macabre, but honestly, I didn’t think I could really make something substantial out of it.  So on times like that, I simply turn to the internet, and see if anything piques my attention and gets some writer’s synapses popping.

So I stumbled across this story, about a guy (Guy) who snuffed out a potential relationship via text message, and the girl (Girl) getting so incensed and ragey, that she went on this gigantic monumental diatribe about how she’s young and successful and that she didn’t need him, and then proceeded to apparently screen cap some of his possibly racy, but more just flirtatiously suggestive text messages and sent it off to his employers in an attempt to shame him amongst his peers and probably to try and get him fired.

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Obligatory

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If the Hokies go 0-8 for the rest of the year, it doesn’t matter to me.  I know to most other Tech fans, the game against Virginia is the biggest rivalry of the season, which I can understand because most of them are still living in Virginia.  But I live in Atlanta, and work in Georgia Tech territory, so to me, this is the most important game of the season.  I have to look at Georgia Tech and their flawed logo on a daily basis, and it’s nice to see them put in their place.

So it brings me great joy that Virginia Tech has once again toppled Georgia Tech, and in their house no less.  No matter what happens throughout the rest of the season, even if they go on to have a great season, they still have to live with the fact that they lost to my team.

Good riddance, Capital One

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not much of a credit card user.  It’s part of how I generally remain impervious to credit card debt, because I sparsely use them.  That being said, I still have a few lines of credit here and there and one actual credit card for general use.  And for the last 13 years, it’s been a Capital One credit card, because they were the smart company that capitalized on the recent high school graduates and gave them all offers for (most of) their first credit cards.

Naturally, being the financially reckless teenager I was back then, I took them up on it, and I got my very first credit card with a fairly decent interest rate, and a paltry $200 limit.  A year later, it was without warning bumped up to a $500 limit, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time then, because I in a relationship and wanted to have the financial flexibility to indulge for two.  Eventually my limit was bumped to $2,000, and that’s where it’s remained since.

I maxed it out and paid it off, and since then it’s been nothing more than a rainy day fallback, and a resource to secure hotel rooms and car rentals.  Every time I use it, I pay it off in full, and I haven’t paid interest on anything with it in about five years.  Needless to say, I’m somewhat of a model of intelligent credit card use, if I say so myself.

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The Braves, playoffs, and what I think their chances are

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Oh noes, sports talk!  After I left Talking Chop, I don’t really have any outlet to gab about baseball anymore, and when the day is over, this is still my brog and ultimately I’ll write whatever I want to write about and post it, and not necessarily worry about catering to my seven readers.

In spite of my general apathy towards baseball these days, I’m still a fan of the game, and still a fan of the Braves.  When the day is over, I still want the Braves to win every single game possible, and I want the Braves to ultimately become World Series champions at least once more in the span of my life.

Over the weekend, the Braves came one step closer to fulfilling that ambition, when they mathematically clinched the National League East division.  In doing so, they’re guaranteed not only a spot in the playoffs, but avoid the bullshit one-game playoff game that was marred in controversy in its inception last year, which culminated with the Braves’ season coming to a close after a single game.

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Riot Graves costume construction: fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Alrighty then, Dragon*Con is a month beyond us now, and I feel like I’ve caught up on a lot of things in terms of writing, processing pictures, more writing, and simply getting back into the swing of things. That being said, I realized that I never followed through with my promises to myself and to my seven readers that I’d do my best to chronicle the construction of the Riot Graves gun for the costume I wore at Dragon*Con, and subsequently the other costume components.

So, unlike the LeBlanc staff process that I compartmentalized into many small posts, screw that, I’m just going to go straight into covering everything I possibly can, as detailed as I can, as it came to the construction of the Riot Graves gun, as well as the armor pieces and other doodads necessary to put together the Riot Graves costume.

Admittedly, there aren’t going to be nearly as many photos as I hoped there would be, because frankly there were points during the construction where there simply wasn’t time. Either I would be against the clock against chemical pot life and cure times, or after my haphazard minor league baseball trip, I was against the clock with Dragon*Con quickly approaching. I suppose inquiring minds will have to settle with my intrepid writing abilities instead at certain points.

Photo courtesy of Joseph Chi Lin Photography

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