i put in an order for 3 frags from upscales.com yesterday, and since this hobby demands pay-out-your-ass overnight shipping on everything, they came in the mail this morning. so i took a nice long lunch to come home and unpack and acclimate them. and so far, so good. i got a birdnest, staghorn, and samoensis. and wow is the staghorn blue. (and i dont even have actinics) hopefully they all make it; these are my first acropora corals. in my old tank i just kept montipora and a boring brown anacropora frag lovingly referred to by my girlfriend as “the penis coral”.

i dont have any underwater putty to mount them yet, and since i hate messing with the super glue gel, i’ll just let them chill in my frag rack until then.

and i also found out that my sailfin is a complete camera hog. the damn thing acts more like a dog than a fish, which is cool and all, but not very useful when i’m trying to take pictures, as you can see:

i’m currently trying to figure out whats causing my microbubble issue; it is damn annoying. i’ve narrowed it down to my return pump, so i’m thinking about replacing the pump with an eheim 1250 and the tubing with the solid black kind. i’ll probably do that next month or something.

I finally made a trip back home, and while i was there i picked up my long lost frogspawn. it was the centerpiece of my last tank, and i just couldn’t part with it when it came time to sell all my livestock before the move. it made the trip just fine and within an hour was fluffing out pretty well.

i also had a royal gramma and false perc clownfish waiting for me, but literally two days before i headed home, the gramma decided to find out what the carpet felt like. he didn’t even leave a note! i figured a $15 clownfish wasn’t worth a 4 hour trip so i let my oh-so-nice fish sitter keep it. (he just lost a clownfish of his own)

to avoid a long story, lets just say i had a rental car for the day. and of course my destinations for driving around town were some local fish stores. i grabbed a sailfin tang and a lawnmower blenny while i was out. don’t worry, it wasn’t a compulsive buy just because my tank is finally ready. i’ve been eye-ing sailfins for awhile, and this guy just seemed to have the right personality. hopefully he’s a swimmer and not a hider. the LMB, well everybody needs one of those, right? :] i’m looking to have a large fish-load, so i feel a little preventative maintenance goes a long way

so i went to my very first quakecon with brian (ironically the same weekend as the last uvalan) and i had a great time. mostly hung out with the guys from splash damage and nerve. even though they downsized it, its the biggest lan i’ve ever been to. all the booths they had setup were pretty cool, you didn’t even need to bring your computer really.

they had a big ET:QW setup which brian had to work at teaching all the people how to play. i played a few times in the public area, but after making friends with the developers i played in the back room with all the staff. they had to play the game all day in order to keep things running smoothly. luckily i could just duck in and out of there whenever i wanted; i’m sure they appreciated the break.

the highlight of the event for me, apart from the open bar and id after-parties, was the guitar hero tournament. as i’m sure you all expect, i rocked their socks off. but sal “sluggo” accardo (pc editor at gamespy) let me know that i had another thing coming (see what i did there). he gained my respect as a rock-god since he was the only person who could beat me and won the tournament. but do not fear! i summoned the power of godzilos and whipped him to my own personal soundtrack as made famous by the blue oyster cult. go-go-godzilla!

this whole “moving-to-houston” thing is working out pretty well so far. check out all my pictures from the event here.

snakes on a plane? pffft, keith on an elephant!