New items for sale from my collection has been listed in the Wolverine Books For Sale section. This includes more Wolverine Limited Series #1 - #4 issues from the 1982 mini-series, many Wolverine regular series issues (including #1, #10 (with Sabretooth!), and #75 (Logan's claws revealed as bones)), trading cards, holograms ... and ... issues from the 2001-2002 "Origin" storyline, which is the definitive story of Logan's origins! If you're interested, please check out that section, click on my link that I've provided to my "For Sale" site, and view the issues that I've put up for sale. Discounts will be offered for two or more issues purchased, and free shipping is available for nearly all issues!

Yes, I'm still alive. Barely, but still alive. Currently, what runs my life is

a.) work, where I have to prepare for a trip to Japan in 2005 to set up test equipment (never been there, so I'm looking quite forward to it),
b.) school, where I am one design project away from getting my masters of science in mechanical engineering, and
c.) everything else that's non-webpage related.

Anyway, I know this page isn't anywhere near as refined as the more "modern" webpages, but in my defense, I am not a computer programmer, I don't spend any time learning or keeping updated with the latest webpage making language, and most importantly, I think that this site may still be the webpage for all the detail information pertaining to the ongoing Wolverine issues as well as fan artwork galore. Eventually, when I do finish my design project for school (which I've already put off for about two months due in part to work, a.), being insanely busy right now, I'll put more effort into this page, but as of right now, it just isn't going to happen.

However ...

I did make some small changes. First of all, I was notified by someone that the Wolverine Books For Sale section was down. And I thank the person for notifying me because due to my inactivity with this page, there would be no way on Earth that I would've ever known about the problem. This problem has been resolved. (The problem? My webpage hosting provider, 123hostnow.com, upgraded their server, and I guess the ancient .cgi script that runs my Books for Sale section isn't compatible. Moving this script and the writeable ad section files to my local ISP's webspace hosting services fixed this problem for now)

Second, thanks to Google.com's free services, I've reenabled the search function on my webpage using Google.com's powerful search engine. So, you can finally use the search feature again on my page after a 2-3 year hiatus.

Anyway, I'll write more later during my webpage update in late September. But in the meantime, my last comment for now.

Today marks the 3rd anniversary for the tragedy that struck the victims of the 9/11 terrorist acts in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family members of those victims. 9/11/01 was a dark chapter in our nation's history, and it is imperative that we never forget what happened that day. Only through learning from our pain and mistakes that this event inflicted and exposed can we ensure that we and our children will have a brighter, safer future.

Before I get grilled about my inept ability to update my page, let's just say that my same excuse still holds true as before: I am usually at work for about 12 hours total (which includes 2 hours total of commuting). Throw in a graduate class two days a week with another 2 days of having to do homework, and then three design projects that I'm in charge of at work, and then on the weekends, a never-ending rush to get our second bathroom remodeled in time for my sister's wedding in July, and you can see that I have absolutly no time whatsoever on a typical week. (That's probably why I'm still single ... the day's too short for me). Hey, gotta give up something to save up for that down payment towards a home or condo in about two years, y'know. :-)

So how did I manage to get this page updated this week? I left the painting up to my dad for the bathroom, and took an entire day off just to work on this page. And granted that my "current issue" is still one issue behind the actual "current issue", it's an update nevertheless.

And before I get nagged about it again: Yes, I do know that Origin came out. Yes, I do know that it tells the definitive origins for ol' Canucklehead. Yes, I do know his real name is James Howlett. And yes, I've finally managed to update this *itty bitty information* into the "Facts about Wolverine" and "Wolverine Origin" section. Will I be writing a review of the entire 6-part "Origin" series? Perhaps. What is certain is that a summary of the 6-part Origin series in its entirety will have to be written for the "Wolverine Origin" section, and when I will get around to doing that ... well, let's just say my time table right now has that slated after July at the earliest. So, for those of you who keep wondering what the story is behind the Origin series: go buy it! You don't need to shell out the $60 to get the entire "Origin" series; Marvel has a trade paperback that they had released for under $15 which has all six issues retold in one single book. It's a deal, and if you want to know Wolverine's definitive origin without having to shell out an arm and a leg for the original comic books, get the trade paperback at your local comic book store, or even Amazon.com has it in stock.

Anyway, someone asked what ever happened to my full-cover scans of each comic book that I've wrote reviews from. In the past, I had a clickable link on each of the comic book review within the "Issue Database" to a bigger scanned image of the comic book. This was at the time when my page was spanning over 3 different free web hosting services. And eventually, I ran out of space, for obvious reasons (free web hosting service = not a lot of webspace). Well, at some request from fans who would like to see that put back, I'm slowly rescanning all my comic book cover images with my current scanner, whose quality exceeds that of my old scanner (4800 dpi versus 600 dpi) and am slowly restoring that feature. Therefore, the more recent issues do have clickable links to bigger cover scans, approximately 500 x 780 dpi in size, for you to view. And before some of you start complaining about why I have to deface the image by putting my website's link on the bottom: the reason I do this is because a lot of people have the tendancy to borrow scanned images from other people's websites for either their own websites or for "selling my book" purposes (like on Ebay, for example). By having my link down there, this is my "branding" to show that the image was scanned by me and placed on my site for me to use. Anyone else is free to use them, but the link must be attached onto the picture. It's that simple.

I will write more soon ... gotta give my opinion on the X2 movie which I finally saw after it had been released about 5 weeks ago. :-P

The year 2002 has come and passed in the blink of an eye. Can you believe that it's 2003 already? And even more surprising: the fact that I haven't wrote any new notes in over 9 months??

Since the last I wrote a message here, nothing major has changed in my life. Once again, sounding like a broken record, I have to say that work is what's consumed most of my time now. Since I absolutely hate the I-405 commute through the Sepulveda pass (fellow SoCal folks will know exactly what I'm talking about), I usually get to work around 7am and then leave work at around 7pm (and no, I really don't work that many hours because I'd never get recognized for that many hours to begin with as a salaried employee). That way, I can beat the morning traffic, and wait for the evening traffic to clear out as much as possible. It takes me approximately an hour each way to and from work, so if you do the math, work + commute = 14 hours of my day right there. Tack on about 5-6 hours of sleep, and that leaves me with about 4 hours of free time. Then take about 1/2 hour of that for me to get prepared for work in the morning, and that leaves me with only 3-1/2 hours of free time, of which an hour of that is taken up by dinner. So what do I have to do with 2-1/2 hours? If I have class (which I still do as a graduate student), I could be doing homework. If I don't have homework, then I'd either be replying to my emails or playing video games. So, as you can see, the only real free time for me to do anything webpage-related is during the weekends, or when I'm sitting at work waiting for traffic to lighten up, which is what I'm doing right now.

UCLA grad school isn't getting any worse nor is it getting any better. Granted I'm only taking one class per quarter at UCLA, but it seems like so much more than that because of work. So far, I'm taking #5 of 9 classes right now ... am taking Convective Heat Transfer theory this quarter with my advisor as the professor of the class ... which means that by now, I really should have an idea as to whether I want to pursue the thesis plan or the written/oral final test plan in order to qualify for a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering. And guess what? I still have no idea what I want to do. I absolutely hate oral exams because I've noticed that my train of thought moves so much faster than me speaking, which means half the time, the words coming out of my mouth when I'm under pressure almost sounds like babbling. But, I also hate doing research: I love design work, which is what I'm doing here at work, but to do research involves a huge amount of time and resources, of which both I am in very short supply of. *sigh* At this rate, I think I'm going to wait until the very last minute when the school of engineering at UCLA sends me that letter telling me that I'd better decide soon with my 3-year limit for grad school coming up in about 1-1/2 years.

Personal life? Non-existant. I don't think I'm putting any effort into it. Plus I still haven't met the right woman in my life yet, which by now (at age 25) is starting to make me concern. What's that thing about your biological clock ticking? *LOL* Oh well, there's still time since my cousin and my dad were late to get married too. I do get out once in awhile to hang out with friends ... Vegas and camping trips with my close friends, and beach volleyball Wednesdays with my coworkers at nearby Manhattan or Hermosa Beach, but other than that ...

So also within that 9 month period, I took a week trip to New York City to visit relatives. I had not been to New York City in over 8 years, so it was definitely nice to see them and my cousins so much more mature than what I had remembered them as being. And of course, I made the "pilgrimage" to Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack, which is arguably one of, if not, the most tragic historical event to ever happen to us here in the United States. By the time I visited the site, Ground Zero was pretty much already all cleaned up, with the only thing remaining was a big hole in the ground which was the foundation of what was once the World Trade Center towers. What had the most emotional impact, I felt, was a memorial that was set up nearby which had items that were digged out from the WTC rubble and placed on a chain-linked fence. It was amazing how looking at these items ... very common everyday items like stuffed animals, T-shirts, personal items, etc. ... mixed in with thousands of notes of symphathy written by people all over the world who had visited this site ... can have such an enormous emotional impact. Ordinary lives were shattered on that dark day, and this makeshift memorial was a reminder that these people weren't soldiers of any type, but rather just ordinary people going to work like any other normal people would be doing on a routine day. There was also another makeshift memorial on the wall of a nearby vacated building where firefighters from all over the country had left their fire station's patch as a way of honoring those brave men and women of the NYPD and FDNY whose lives were lost as they tried to do their job to save the innocent victims trapped or fleeing the WTC buildings. This site was another very emotionally-charged place. Eventually, I'll post some of these photos up on the web for public viewing if you haven't seen similar pictures yet on the Internet.

With that said ...

I've bought a whole crapload of new stuff over that 9-month period which helped me to get that one huge update in December after a 7-month hiatus of updating the webpage. First off, right before I left for my trip to NYC, I bought a new HP laptop computer. Powered by an Intel P3-1.2Ghz processor, 256MB SDRAM, 15" TFT LCD monitor, and a DVD/CD-RW combo, this computer was something that will help me out a lot. Why? First, I've always talked about buying one, and second, being on vacation for 10 days, I knew that I could get some really old fan fictions encoded, some dating as far back as 2001. So, during this trip, I was able to encode about 20 fan fictions ... all these fan fiction backlog that I had yet to encode to fit my webpage's design. That was a tremendous load off my back to finish encoding those fan fictions, and again, to those writers, I greatly appreciate your patience and I apologize for the huge delay since everything on my webpage is "hand-crafted" and barely anything is fully-automated.

Next, around the October time-frame, I bought a brand new scanner to replace my aging 300x600 24-bit Mustek scanner which had served me faithfully for 6 years. I bought a new Microtech Scantek 5900 scanner, which has a far-superior 48-bit quality and a 2400x4800 dpi resolution through a USB2.0 feed. This scanner enables me to scan much more high-quality scanned images to post on the web. Although I do use a higher compression ratio for my JPG files that do diminish the quality of the picture as a tradeoff for faster download speed, the scanned image quality is much more better than before.

A few weeks later, I bought a new Creative Labs Audigy 2 soundcard. The quality of the sound from this soundcard, when compared to my old Creative Labs PCI128 sound card, is like night and day: I can hear so much more sound from the same mp3 file on the new Audigy 2 soundcard over my old PCI128 sound card.

Finally, right after Thanksgiving, I bought some new programs for my computer, which included Pinnacle Studio software. This software enables me to create, edit, and burn my own VCD and DVD files from mpeg files that I can record off of my TV capture card. Most importantly, however is that this program will allow me to create short mpeg, Quicktime qtw, Windows AVI, or Realtime .ra files, and I can adjust the sound level of the files to a louder setting. Unfortunately, due to either the program itself or the speed of my computer not being "fast" enough for this program (despite my computer having a 1Ghz Celeron processor and the minimum for this program being 500Mhz), I have problems where the sound clips in my movie files cutting out for a few seconds to a few minutes at a time for no apparent reason. This has happened almost every single time, but in all cases, my "movies" were about 30 minutes long, which meant my computer will take about 1-1/2 hours to compile and burn an edited movie to a VCD, DVD, or a mpeg file. I have yet to try making small 10-30 second clips, but I think for those instances, it will be okay.

So what does this mean? Coupled with my webserver offering unlimited bandwidth and webspace, I do hope to start tinkering with creating my own downloadable sound files, and creating short X-Men cartoon snippets from both the original X-Men animated series (back when it was on Fox Kids TV) and the current X-Men: Evolution cartoon and post them as downloadable files off of my website. This is something that I've noticed is not available anywhere among other Wolverine or most X-Men-related webpages, so I think this should give you fans more of an incentive to visit my site, despite my sporatic updates nowadays. Granted, I don't profit in any form or another on this webpage, and I haven't earned a single penny for the hundreds of hours that I've spent on developing this "crude, amateur" webpage (remember, I'm not a computer programmer, so I don't know a thing about creating Flash media or making a webpage "move" ... I just try to offer as much information and downloadable pictures of Wolverine as possible), but hey, it's my expensive hobby at this point, and I've got to have some way of improving the webpage even more now that v2.0 of this webpage is still heavily stalled.

Therefore, if there are any certain clips from either X-Men cartoons that you'd like to see posted, please let me know what episode name it is and what scene it is. Granted, it will probably take a few months, if not a year, to fulfill your request, because unfortunately, I'm still on dial-up internet connection and have not made the switch yet to broadband cable (due to some CGI compatibility issues with my new current webpage server, who uses an NT-based server, that right now is running fine on my old webpage server/ISP provider), but hey, at least it gives me an idea as to what video clips you'd like to see on this page. Please note that it must be a scene that Wolverine is in and has a speaking role; in another words, I don't want to be posting scenes of, say, Jean Grey talking, but with Wolverine in the background saying or doing absolutely nothing. This is a Wolverine page, after all, not a X-Men page, and I don't intend on posting whole cartoon episodes on the web because that's a huge waste of my time to create and my server's webspace.

So anyway, I hope to commit myself to working a bit more on this webpage, and yes, I still need to update the "Wolverine Facts" and "Wolverine Origins" section to reflect the Origins series that has been written and is already out that defines Wolverine's "true" origin, so check back occasionally for new update and material on this page!

Ok, I think I owe everyone an explanation in regards to my 3 month hiatus of not working on the webpage. Basically, this is what I have been up to the last three months:

a.) Work. It's my source of income. Period. Without work, I can't save up for the bigger and better things in life, and without work, I wouldn't be able to pay for my own domain name and web hosting services which will enable me to expand this page tenfolds in the future. I've been assigned to various projects and having to travel around the Southland and to the Gulf Coast that it definitely eats up the majority of my time.

b.) Grad school @ UCLA. Yeah, I still don't know what I'm planning on doing in grad school, but the opportunity had presented itself for me to go to grad school, and since my employer is paying for my tuition cost at school, this was an opportunity I would not (and I hope other people can attest to) pass up on. Yes, I am taking one class per quarter ... in fact, I have a final in about two weeks for my Boiling and Condensation graduate class ... but throw in this equation with full-time work and you've got a lot of work on your hand.

c.) Repiping my home with copper pipes. This is the main reason why this page has not been updated since December. It was after my last update that I started attacking this three-month long project of replacing all our 25-yr old galvanized steel pipes with copper pipes. For most of you homeowners who are familiar with galvanized steel pipes, over time, rust will build up inside. And for us, it all began with a leaky pipe in our garage in October. That pipe was replaced, and noticing the rest of our hot water pipes, we decided to repipe the garage portion of the pipes. This was around November. It was an easy enough job. However, installing these now-open pipes increased the water pressure throughout the house, which was supposed to happen ... *but* ... in the process, it knocked off some rust which clogged the mixer valve on one of our shower stalls. This mixer valve is about 35 years old ... about the age of the home. It is not possible to disassemble it like valves are today. This meant having to cut open the wall to replace the valve. *However*, the pipes that went to this valve were all galvanized steel, which meant that we'd have to cut them, which meant we'd have to replace the entire stretch of pipes that fed into the valve. To make this long story short, we to knock open the walls and repipe the entire house with Type L copper tube. This ongoing project started in mid-December, and it had consumed every single one of my weekends from then until just this past weekend, when my dad and I finally finished replacing all the steel pipes with copper. Every single weekend, our local Home Depot became my second home, as I was armed with my trusty Discover credit card and a list of piping parts that I would be needing to purchase for that particular weekend's project portion. And since I figured I lived at home rent-free, I would provide the cost and labor on the entire project, which cost me a tad under $1000 and 10 endless weekends. Of course our next step is to repatch up the walls and repaint it ... but as most people who has done home improvement work knows, once you've opened up a can of worms, everything else falls into place. Therefore, the next several months will most likely involve repatching up the walls, reflooring one of our bathroom with floor tiles, and now remodeling the entire kitchen (cabinet surfacing, floor tiles) and then some.

So, these three reasons are the main reasons why this page has not been updated recently. Will this page be "retired"? Heck no! I've spent too much time in the past accumulating the amount of information, data, and pictures, and to throw that all away is not my idea of time well spent. And, as many of you must have found out by now, I have my own domain, and this page is now located at http://wolverine.x-knights.com/. I pay about $10/mo for unlimited webspace, bandwidth, and transfer, which means this page has nearly unlimitless growth and expansion potential. Coupled with the fact that I bought another TV card to replace my old one that had burnt out from my old motherboard, somewhere down the line, I can start adding Wolverine video clips to my website from the X-Men and X-Men: Evolution cartoon series. (Oh, and if you're wondering: my old existing link, http://www.thevine.net/~falcon/comics/wolverine.html, will remain active for the unforseeable future as a "mirror" site to my main X-Knights link.)

(Note: if you know of a good affordable video creating program ... preferably free on the net if possible or at least low cost ... that can allow me to save files in either .avi, .qtw, or .mpeg file format, please let me know via email. The program that came with my TV card has one glaring problem with it: it records at a volume level that's way too low ... and I can't edit the videos that it creates to make the sound louder or change the resolution of the videos that it creates ... so I'm looking for a program which would enable me to modify these .mpeg files that it creates and save them into other file formats.)

Therefore, I sincerely apologize to all the talented fan artists and creative fan fiction writers for not posting their material up sooner ... my main drag right now is to have to read and review the last four issues of Wolverine that has been published, which after finals week at school (two weeks from today), I hope to have done.

Finally, before I get asked again: I don't plan on reviewing any issues of Origins until the entire 6-pt series has been published. The reason is that my preference is to review all 6 issues and rework the "Wolverine Origins" section of the page to reflect the definitive origins for Wolverine. That way, once all 6 issues has been released, we'll all know for certain what exactly is the whole story behind his origins, and I won't have to continuously update the "Wolverine Origins" section every month just to reflect any new changes that may have occurred to his origins from the previous month's issue.

FINALLY, I get an update done after 4 months of hiatus. Wow, that's a record for me, isn't it? Anyway, as you've read in the last two "notes" that I had posted up, I have had computer trouble. So tally it up, this is what had died on my old computer: