The amount of work and detail that is put into Disneyland is just amazing.  I never get tired of coming to Disneyland.  It’s always fun singing along to everything though half of the people there think we’re crazy.

I need to come here and take pictures more often because there are so many little interesting things that are just beckoning to be photographed.

I must go back one more time before Summer starts.  There are only 12 more days left that I can go in June!  July is completely blocked out and so is half of August.  The second half of August I will be busy with my high school, so that’s no good.

Anyone want to go any time soon?

School was out a week ago! I got to end the year with lots of fun performances. I think that was definitely the most performances I’ve had in a month ever in my life. It was definitely fun though, and I’ve definitely taken more pictures during this month than any other month and that was also very fun.

Aside from that, I also attended a couple BBQs. The AX one left me smelling like smoke and it took a whole day for the smell to go away. The one on Memorial Day was nice and quiet and relaxing.

And that’s it for the good news.

This is a minor nuisance, but my laptop charger is dead now. The wires in the connector are short circuiting so it will not provide any power to my laptop anymore. I am currently borrowing my sister’s whenever she is not using it. So that was two chargers that died on me this month, and there’s only one good one left in this household.

Because it’s so annoying having to wait for my sister to not use her laptop to get anything done, I thought this would be a great time to cross over to a Mac. I’ve been thinking about getting a 20″ iMac for a while after all, so why not do it when my PC continues to fail me. But of course, that wouldn’t be the plan for long.

This next bit is rather ironic I think.

I told Michelle about the problem with my laptop, and she (being a Dell user) offers to let me borrow a charger temporarily until I can resolve the issue. So Monday evening, I start heading up to UCLA to pick it up. I only made it half way because my car engine started acting up. While I was going at 75MPH two lanes over from the carpool lane, next to a CHP car, and with a large SUV with rather bright headlights coming up behind me at probably 85MPH, my engine experienced a sudden loss of power. RPMs dropped and my speed was down to 50MPH in about 5 seconds, which now that I think about it is abnormally fast. I tried to accelerate back to 88MPH so the flux capacitor would work, but then my engine completely cut out and RPMs dived to 0. Time of death, 11:12PM.

So my engine is blown, and considering how fast that thing leaks oil, I’m not too surprised. It’s just not fun having to deal with it. It uses over a gallon of oil a month. If it lasted any longer, I would have been using more oil than gas.

Oh and earlier, my shoot-through umbrella and my backpack broke. At least those two were easy to replace.

So plans for summer are going to have to change a bit. No new computer, not as much new camera gear. I have to get a replacement car soon after all.

But the good news is: AX2009 is less than 5 weeks away!

Last Saturday I played one of the most amazing steel drum concerts I have ever been in. It was so much fun, and the best part was a lot of my friends and family came.

My good friend Johnny B’s girlfriend Alyssa was kind enough to take pictures for us during the second concert and she got some amazing shots.

The lighting for this concert was interesting because it was the first time we performed in a dance theater. I thought they would turn on their side lights, but they didn’t for whatever reason. But the pictures still all came out pretty good I think.

Come to my next steel drum concert in December!

My laptop almost quit on me several times this month already. It’s only about 3 years old, but I use my laptop a lot as it is my primary computer so I can believe that the end of its lifespan is coming. Some of my other friends with almost the exact same model who bought it about the same time I did have had theirs die already. So I’m expecting mine to quit soon.

Maybe while I’m writing this entry?

My plan now is to hope it will last me until summer. And hopefully by then I’ll have enough money to buy a new computer. But this time, I plan to switch over to a Mac. I plan to get a 20″ iMac. I had trouble visualizing what a 20″ screen would look like, so I stopped by the Apple Store to take a look. 20″ is pretty big, and 24″ is way too big for my desk. At roughly the price of a new SLR body, this better be a good investment. But before getting it, I have to figure out one thing: Aperture or Lightroom?

I have exclusively been a PC user so this will be interesting.

Any PC to Mac users have feedback?

I’m on Spring Break now!  And this year, Ceasar Chavez Day was not during spring break!  But we still didn’t get the holiday off?  Bummer..

Now that I have some time to sit down and blog, I will.  Then I shall do some very much needed spring cleaning in my room.  I probably have lots of things to toss out and a ton of photo gear to organize and store somewhere.  A lot of my free time (if that exists) I used to make random photo things out of stuff like cardboard and tape, so  need a place to put it all.

Let’s begin by recapping everything that’s happened since the last post. (I am currently consulting flickr and my pictures to refreshen my memory on stuff that happened)

I should have posted this one on my last post, but here’s my birthday cake just because I like cheesecake so much.

But besides that, more drumline competitions for Westminster HS. That’s keeping me busy. It’s getting tiring because I feel like I’m more motivated than some of the kids marching. Shooting pictures at the competitions is good practice for my photography though. Bad gym lights, fast moving kids… how much harder can it get?

Happy 5 months! I feel like a jerk for not doing anything special…

I think the highlight for me is the World Percussion concert. We all had a blast! Friends and family went to this one! So I’m happy. Thank you everyone who showed up.

My sister’s blog has some videos if you want to see because you couldn’t make it or something. None of the steel drum performance though, just the African stuff which is still super cool. That just gives everyone a better reason to stop by CSU Long Beach on May 2nd to go to the big steel drum concert!

I’m going to cut this post short because I am going to bed earlier so I can wake up and clean tomorrow! It’s time to discover what’s underneath the pile of stuff.