1997 - Raider3 starts out the year unemployed, though still on #anime! despite his fragile emotional state at the time. A few get-togethers with #anime! folks occur, mainly karaoke outings at San Francisco's Japantown area. Things improve with the beginning of a new job with California Relay Service. (Initially operated by Relay America!, then GC Services, the current contractor.) This marks the next stage of online and public fandom for Raider3, as some ties are broken, and some new ones begin...

Raider3 attends Fanime Con '97, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of Gainax's first animated motion picture, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise. This year was a lean year, as scheduling after Fanime Con until the end of summer left no weekends available for club-related outings, but occasional shopping trips to San Jose and surrounding area occurred, continuing the massive expansion of the personal anime collection. Regular anime club attendance resumes after August 1997. (Building up enough seniority to get weekends off is a great thing, indeed. ^_^;)

1998 - Raider3 joins the staff of Anime Central in their inaugural year, working in Convention Operations, a post he has continued in to this day. Fanime Con '98 becomes a two-day, two location event, with events at Foothill College, and at a hotel in the Sunnyvale area. (Location coming soon to this section! - late revision.) Things gradually return to normal, though Raider3 has more or less stopped drawing anime/manga artwork since late 1996.

1999 - The beginning of a noble experiment - The “Triple Crown” anime con challenge. The Raider3 Organization's effort kicks off in early 1999 with attendance at Fanime Con 1999 (pre-registered, even), though most of Saturday morning and afternoon's events were missed, due to several reconstruction of Ami-chan, the Raider3 Organization primary multimedia/internet PC, as Windows 98 was severely shredded by a faulty Internet Explorer installation. However, all was not lost, as there were several evening events, including the cosplay (all the way across town in Santa Clara's convention center, current home of Fanime Con), and all-night karaoke ^_^; Ami-chan, serving Raider3 since late 1995, was retired at the end of 1999, due to being non-Y2K compliant.

Raider3 returned to Anime Central, where he caught a very interesting picture of Amanda Winn-Lee at the masquerade contest (Which only one person has been promised a copy of. All others lose out, as it will NOT be posted with the rest of the pictures, because the Raider3 Organization will not deal with Cease and Desist letters. End of story. ^_^;) 1999 was the year of the hotel labyrinth that was the Ramada Inn near O'Hare, a stupid last day stunt involving a fire alarm triggering, and a Monday morning city walk that took Raider3 into the neighboring suburb of Des Plaines, and to the 1000th McDonald's, but that's another story...

The great return trip to Anime Expo happened in Summer of 1999, with the Raider3-Alpha, the vehicle that replaced the Red Raider3 Mk. III, having been retired due to age, and failure of the transmission. The drive to Anaheim and back to Modesto was an adventure in itself, with Raider3 staying off site at a nearby inn. Costs were cut in order to provide enough funding for purchasing merchandise.

Raider3 also entered the DVD era, with the acquisition of a DVD player on the way back from AX '99, as well as his first anime DVD - Serial Experiments Lain, volume 1. The DVD library continues to grow, as DVD becomes the preferred format at Raider3 Cinema.

In retrospect, the anime con Triple Crown was more or less a success, but quite taxing on financial resources. It is highly unlikely that the event would be repeated again, unless a job change, and moving into a higher income range/tax bracket changes things... Fanime Con and Anime Central become the primary events for Raider3 after 1999.

Fandom on a local level starts this year, with the discovery of other anime fans at Raider3's workplace, primarily “Megumi,” and a few others. Megumi would go on to do anime-con trips to AX in the next few years, and other local anime fandom efforts were around the corner...

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