The Bigger They Are....

EMU's President was fired yesterday, presumably over the Laura Dickinson murder. The Detroit Free Press has the story. Was it a cover up or just gross mishandling? I don't really know, but the buck has to stop somewhere.

In better news, the giant got a great deal of work over the weekend. The fleshtone is coming along nicely, and the face is starting to come together. There is a wrap of scaly skin on his right forearm that people typically paint green. I chose to paint it red to represent the skin of a defeated Carnosaur, a dinosaur looking thing from the traditional Skaven enemy, the Lizardmen. With only twelve potential days to go, I'm getting more and more worried that I will be able to finish him in time. I still have the two Skaven that sit on his back to paint!

GD Entry WIP 2

Conversion work is almost done. I ended up making a little crow's nest of balsa for the old warlock engineer, and have finished all the machinery on the back. The only think left now are the shields that go on the left forearm and the chains and hooks that connect all the machinery to the giant. I have the first hook assembled (jewelry chain and thin brass rod) and will be attaching it hopefully today. I don't know if I'm going to bother with hooks and chains on the lower part... it's busy enough down there already. I also repositioned the giant on the base (with Mark's advice) so that he's in mid-stride. It levels out the platforms that the Skaven ride on and makes the piece more dynamic overall.

I seriously need to take some photos, and it's almost time to start painting. Including today, I have 17 days to complete this fellow. Time is short.

Girlfriend and Girlfriend

A tale of two ... um... songs. One has anime and the other has the F-bomb.

My girls like the Avril Lavigne song "Girlfriend." They heard it on the pop station Stef and the kids listen to in the car sometimes, and even if Stef tunes away when it comes on they are already aware of it and get all excited when a promo for it comes on or the DJ says it's coming up. Ordinarily, I think it's great when my kids hear a song they like (Sarah has become attached to the song "New York City" by "They Might Be Giants" lately) but I'm none too pleased about "Girlfriend," since the song drops the F-bomb about a third of the way through. I don't know doodely-squat about Ms. Lavigne except that she appears to have been 16 for about the past ten years, and drops the F-bomb in a song my 8- and 6-year old like. Yay.

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI ... T-53 seconds to cussin'.

When Lily first told me that she likes the song I told her that I liked it too, because I thought she meant the song from Guitar Hero 2. One of my favorite tracks is "Girlfriend, as made famous by Matthew Sweet" ("as made famous by" is their code for "it's not really him") and the girls have seen me play it, and have played it themselves. After watching the above-linked Avril Lavigne video, I decided to search for the Matthew Sweet version.

And here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4b98QpDh65I ... go watch. I'll wait here.
EDIT: this one works ... http://youtube.com/watch?v=UYOt9_5v1cA

Not only did I find it, but I quickly realized that I had heard of this video before. Back in 1991, when Matthew Sweet's version was released, anime was fairly rare in the U.S. The fact that a great deal of the video was footage from the anime file Space Adventure Cobra was a real oddity at the time. Pretty much everyone who saw the video told me about it, but I never once got to see it. Until now. And I didn't miss much, did I? First off, how uncomfortable do you have to look before the director of your music video just says, "You know what? Let's just use the animated parts and leave you out, okay?" It's not like these were the early days of music video or something... "Nevermind" came out that same year.... they should have known better.

Anyway, what's the point? I don't know. It's just a contrast for me to point out.

GD Entry WIP 1

I've heard people on forums advise against talking too much about one's Golden Demon work in progress to avoid having anyone steal your idea. It seems kinda paranoid to me. Maybe if I make the finalists this year I'll think about being super secret next year.

I bought the model on July 1, one of the new giants that I'm converting for the Skaven. I'm pretty much done with basic assembly and gap filling. I've created some little balsa scaffolding for the engineer to perch upon as he peers around the giant's left shoulder. I still need to come up with a convincing way to connect all the Skaven mechanisms to the giant's back. The current favored idea is a couple of vertical posts attached to the giant's skin with metal brackets, then having everything else hanging from those main posts.

In addition to the engineer, I'm trying to find a place to put an engineer hero on the model. He's pretty cool, holding a warplock pistol in one hand and pointing with the other. He's an old model, too, which appeals to me for some reason on the new giant. I'm debating whether to put him on the giant somewhere, perhaps on the right hand side slightly higher than the other engineer, or on the base slightly behind the giant, as if he pointed and the giant went. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Skepticism

Two people now have told me that the Transformers movie is great. I'm still unconvinced... I mean come on, it's Transformers. Robots that turn into cars and airplanes and tape decks and handguns and what-not. Maybe there's an implicit buy-in for people who loved them as children. I missed the Transformers age by a couple years so they hold no appeal for me. As a long-time anime fan I even have some affection for robots that turn into other things, although that typically means something useful (even if dubiously so) in anime. I just have no interest in the Transformers brand, its intellectual property, and so I have been unable to muster interest in the film. Now, make an Aura Battler Dunbine movie, and I'll be trying to convince the Transformers crowd that it has potential. Okay, maybe not.

I've been preparing my model for the Chicago Golden Demon painting competition. Creating a Demon entry is sort of like buying a lottery ticket for me... I know I don't have a great chance of winning, but I just can't resist fantasizing about that lifting that sword. I've set my goal this year to make first cut in the judging, but deep down there's that little spark of hope. At the very least, I'll get to see the winners, something I have been looking forward to greatly. If I were going to a European Games Day I'm sure the anticipation would be a bit different. Their competition models are unbelievable, so I'd have zero hope of winning and be all giddy about seeing the entrants.

That's It.... I'm Old

I just went out on my front lawn to yell at some kids across the street who were breaking up my elderly neighbors' decorative white rocks. The kids were throwing the rocks at the street to shatter them, spraying rock chips all over the place.

I yelled at some kids. Next stop: riding my Rascal(tm) out there to yell at some kids.

The Sweet Spot

Stef and I took the kids to see Ratatouille this weekend. Now before I talk about the movie I have a confession to make. I'm a Brad Bird fanboy. His first movie, The Iron Giant, was wonderful, but after it had a less than stellar box office performance I suspected his career in animation was over. I was thrilled when Pixar put him in charge of The Incredibles, which seemed to pay off since the film was commercially successful. I was again thrilled to see that Brad Bird was writing and directing Ratatouille. Sure, I would have wanted to see it irregardless, as I have loved every Pixar movie I've seen (disclaimer: I haven't seen Cars yet), but the fact that they brought Brad Bird back made me actually excited to see it. Okay, enough fanboy action.

The movie itself is great. It has wonderfully exaggerated character design, great voice acting, a compelling plot and a lovely ending. Where it really shines though is in the portrayal of mental state, from the initial visualizations of flavor, to the state of being lost in doing what you love, to being taken back to your childhood by a particular experience. It is also very funny; I found myself laughing out loud far more often than I do in a typical movie.

Side note: I react more to movies and TV since having kids than I ever did before. When I watch things with them I want to share the experience of finding something funny or tragic. I want them to share how they are feeling too, and I don't think sitting stone-faced through a movie really encourages that. I want them to see that I enjoy things and that it's okay for them to enjoy things too. Don't look for too much meaning there.

Okay, back to Ratatouille. Another of it's strong points was the physical comedy. We are accustomed to seeing animated characters in unlikely physical situations and not thinking a thing of it, so I was very impressed at how the physical comedy seemed a little crazy yet still realistic. A good example is Linguini (human main character) wrestling his bicycle in through the front door of his apartment. He has a terrible time of it, but it seems plausible. It could have been done all wrong, like the typical "fighting with the chaise lounge" scene so common in cartoons. Instead, it is beautifully animated with just the right balance of realism to invoke my own memories of wrestling bikes through unlikely places, making the scene all the funnier.

I was somewhat sad when I learned that Disney's last 2D animated film would be "Home on the Range." Not that Home on the Range was bad, but I like 2D animation, and felt that something would be lost in 3D. Pixar has always managed to capture the character of 2D animation, and Ratatouille (or Rapatooey or Rapatooney as my kids would call it) has really shown Pixar as the successor to the animation crown, if I'm not being too pretentious. Pixar movies aren't great for their technical accomplishment; they are just plain great, and Ratatouille demonstrates just how great they can be.

EDIT: Oh, yeah... the title. Something about this film just hit the sweet spot with me, but I can't really say why. I can identify so many things that I liked about it, yet I am unable to identify what makes it great.... more than just the sum of a number of enjoyable elements. I'll suppose I'll have to be content with calling it great with no plausible rationale.

Grade School Humor

The Chinese take-out place around the corner from me has a dish called "Pu Pu Platter" shown on the light-up color picture menu above the cash register.

I Know It's An Old Joke, But....

I just found out that all the volume settings on Guitar Hero 2 go up to 11. It's been 23 years since that movie, and I still giggle at references like that.

Going To Chicago!

Well, I bit the bullet and did it. After two years of wanting to go, yesterday I purchased my bus ticket to Games Day Chicago 2007. This is a yearly event in four U.S. cities (Altanta, Baltimore, Chicago and L.A.) and a few other cities world wide where Games Workshop has a dog and pony show. There are previews of unreleased items, seminars and workshops, and the "Golden Demon" national painting competition. I am greatly looking forward to seeing world class painted miniatures in person after seeing only photos of them for the two years I've been painting. I'm going to have my own entry, and I will be thrilled to death if I make first cut. I'd also like to meet any CMON'ers who might be there in person.

One nice thing is that a bus is leaving from the Paint Creek Crossing GW store, about 10 minutes from my house, early Saturday morning for the event. I can veg out for the four hour trip, go like crazy all day, sleep the whole way home, and it costs less then the gas would cost for me to drive the truck there!

Fourth Grade Logic

I don't know who Steven D. Krause is. Maybe you do. All I really know about the guy I learned by reading this. Maybe I'm just being cranky, but I didn't find it particularly funny. Okay, maybe a little funny but still exasperating.

Assertion: If you want to run some arbitrary system and ICT refuses to support it, citing "security and support issues," it really means they don't want to or they don't know how.

I work in ICT. We support a lot of stuff. Really. As soon as we take part in whatever server/software you are interested in running, we have to own it. That means every little problem with the system falls directly into our lap. That means that every difficulty the user has with the system falls directly into our lap, even if the software is working exactly as designed. It means that we have to stay abreast of updates, including security vulnerabilities, that this software may have. It means we have to add this system to a backup plan. It means we need a disaster recovery procedure for this system. It becomes part of our job. It becomes part of our life.

In elementary school it was a common activity to try and get peers to do things they shouldn't or didn't want to do. To the mob, reluctance to perform would only indicate that the person either didn't know how or was, heaven forbid, "chicken."

Some attitudes never die, I suppose.

Retroactive Distrust

My trust in my employer, Eastern Michigan University, is wavering. In the past I have given them a great deal of slack about things such as the University House. Now I am starting to wonder if my trust was ill placed.

In December a student, Laura Dickinson, was raped and murdered on campus. The strange part was that we (the university community) didn't know that a crime had been committed until another student was arrested for the crime on February 23. We had received the sad news that a student had died on campus, something that seems to happens once every few years for various reasons, but until the arrest the university's communications with the community (and with her parents) had indicated that there was no reason to suspect foul play. Even after the arrest I wanted to give the university the benefit of the doubt and assume that either officials were ignorant of the facts surrounding her death or that they had some other justifiable reason for the "no cause for alarm" communiques.

On June 8, the board of regents hired a law firm to investigate and report on the situation. I'm no lawyer, but the time frame given in the report (here) sure makes it look like the university performed a cover-up operation. When it comes to conspiracy theories, I have always tended to assume incompetence over impropriety, but this is just too fishy. EMU may have even broken the "Clery Act," a law that requires federally funded institutions to divulge crimes that occur on campus.

I now find myself wondering if any of the slack I had formerly extended the university was well founded. If the default position is "deny everything, but recant and apologize in the face of incontrovertible evidence" then I am hardly inspired to trust.

EDIT: I have met most of the EMU staff cited in these stories during my time here. If someone wants to contact me and set me straight on some of this, especially regarding the "no foul play" communique, I would love to hear from you.

LightSprites

I've been keeping up with Kongregate's challenges for the last few months, collecting their pointless little online cards. The latest one involves (in part) the game LightSprites, and I'd like to take a moment to say how much I love this little game.

LightSprites is a little flash game that involves throwing colored balls at similarly colored circles on a landscape that scrolls by to a sunny little tune. Hit a circle with the correct color ball and a little person will pop up and dance. Hit the circle with the wrong colored ball and a little person will pop up and suffer a horrible fate... burned, killed by a ninja, carried off by a bird... you get the picture.

What makes it so great? Does it have gameplay longevity? No, not really. I'm sure I'll play it over the next month or so and never again. What makes it great for me is the presentation. It looks polished, the game mechanics are solid, and it's fun to watch. I think more games (and even movies and books) should be like this. Pick your scope, execute it well, and move on. Not everything has to be epic.

Outside the Demographic

There is a link to a survey by Games Workshop and computer games publisher THQ on the Games Workshop web site. I decided to participate since I truly enjoy THQ's Warhammer 40k game, Dawn of War.

I started the survey and was informed that it would take me approximately 20 minutes to complete. For question #1 I was asked if I was male or female. I answered. Question #2 asked for my age, to the nearest whole number. I answered.

There was no question #3. My age apparently put me outside the relevant demographic for the survey, and I was shuffled off to the "Thank you for your participation" screen. The 20 minute survey took less than 20 seconds. Am I a little miffed about being marginalized? Yeah, just a little.

Reliving Futurama

Buck and I have been watching Futurama on our lunch break. Despite the fact that I have seen every episode 10 times, watching it with someone who has not seen it before makes it even more entertaining. We watched all of the season 1 DVD's, then I brought seasons 2 and 3 in.

After two episodes of season 2, it became clear that Buck was lost. Things were being referenced that he didn't remember having seen. I have seen all the episodes so many times that I couldn't remember which he had seen and which he hadn't, so then I was confused. It turns out that the last person I had lent the DVD's to had put the season 2 DVD's in the season 3 box and vice versa. Buck and I had started watching season 3 thinking we were starting season 2.

Boring, yet true!

I Miss Jen Morgan

It seems random, but today I thought of Jennifer Morgan. Jen hung out with Stef and me in the late 90's, back when there used to be a Silverman's restaurant on Washtenaw Ave. in Ypsilanti. She worked at a deli in town where Stef was job coaching a person with developmental disability, and she and Stef struck up a friendship. Since Silverman's was open 24 hours, they used to hang out there at all hours. Jen took a fall in the cooler at work and hurt her back to the point where she couldn't work at the deli anymore. Zingerman's certainly seemed to go to a great deal of trouble to deny her any kind of workman's comp.

In any case, sometime around 2000 or 2001 Jen ended up moving to Canada to ... you know, I don't really remember the exact circumstances. I'm pretty sure there was a guy up there, and I think she was also planning on going to school. In any case, she moved and just ... disappeared. We couldn't get in touch with her. Her parent's couldn't get in touch with her. She had just vanished. I know Jen's folks tried a number of avenues to find her, but as far as I know never have. What do you do? I was somewhat dismissive about the whole thing at first.... oh, she'll turn up. It seems naive now.

Jen was really Stef's friend, but I developed a certain kinship with her that I haven't experienced with Stef's other friends. It's difficult to describe.... she just seemed like she was on the same frequency as me, something I would describe only a handful of people in my lifetime as being. She was a firm believer in living your life in such a way as to not be in other people's way. She and I would commiserate about the casual breakdown of societal rules... things like parking right by the door of an establishment because you (or someone in your car) only needed to run in for a second. She hated movies with Bruce Willis merely on principal. She introduced me to the band Soul Coughing.

Jen, if you're out there somewhere, we miss you.

Looking Skyward

Tonight, apparently, the Space Shuttle (STS-117) and I.S.S. will be visible to the naked eye in my neck of the woods. Around 10:00 PM moving from northwest to southeast at about the visible speed of a commercial jet.

Sarah got a telescope for her birthday a year-and-a-half ago. Time to bust that sucker out of the box, says I.

EDIT: The telescope seems to work, although it's not the most stable platform for viewing things. The real problem is the haze... the moon is a yellow crescent blob in the sky, the stars are entirely invisible, and all hope of seeing relatively tiny vehicles is gone.

Family IT Foibles

This one is for the search engines more than anything.

Stef's computer was repeatedly crashing when attempting to play anything from Shockwave games. (She has a subscription to shockwave.com which let's you download and play tons of "casual" games... most are quite good, with high production values and ... back to the point.)

Anyway, the games would lock her computer up after a few minutes of play. I tried swapping out the video card, reinstalling all Shockwave drivers (per Shockwave.com tech support) and just generally being "family IT guy" to fix yet another computer problem. Nothing at all helped.

The breakthrough came last night, after I had completely removed Shockwave and Flash drivers from her computer (both files and registry entries) and realized that the games all still played. All this time I had assumed that these were Shockwave content games, especially since their tech support recommended reinstalling the drivers. Anyhoo, the games still ran and still crashed in exactly the same fashion... the screen would freeze and whatever sound was playing would repeat in about a half-second loop for maybe ten second and then the computer would reboot. The sound is what finally tipped me off. I disabled the sound device in control panel and everything started working perfectly (minus sound, of course.) I uninstalled as much of the sound devices as I could, then rebooted and let windows reload the sound drivers, and now everything works perfectly!

So, all you search engine peoples, if Shockwave / Shockwave.com games are freezing / crashing / locking up try reinstalling your sound card drivers. It worked for us.

EDIT: Things started going south again, and I discovered that the fan on the video card was freezing up. It may have been a combination of the two issues at the time, but replacing the video card (or in our case, reverting to the on-board video) has solved the problem.

Breakfast Showdown - part 2

Contender 1: Kroger brand "Chip Mates" Cookie Cereal, chocolate chip
Contender 2: Kroger brand "Chip Mates" Cookies, chunky chocolate chip

Mascot
Cereal: "Chester" the cartoon pirate
Cookies: "Chester" the cartoon pirate

Serving size
Cereal: 1 cup (30g)
Cookies: 2 cookies (29g)

Calories / fat
Cereal: 120 / 1.5g (0 saturated)
Cookies: 150 / 7g (3 saturated)

Carbs:
Cereal: 26g (13g sugar)
Cookies: 20g (11g sugar)

Nutrition:
Cereal: various, 10-30% vitamins and minerals mostly
Cookies: iron 6%... but they taste so good.

Verdict: Despite the fact that the cookies somehow have less sugar and carbs than the cereal, I've gotta go with the cereal on this one. Maybe it's the chunky chocolate chips that add all the fat and calories.

The Bose Experience ... Guitar Hero 2

My parents got me a pair of around-the-ear Bose triport headphones for my birthday this year. Um, wow. No, seriously. If you haven't tried a pair, I sincerely recommend them. I'm not much of an audiophile so I never would have given much thought to headphone above the $30 range, but these Bose headphones are a thing of beauty. I could hear things I didn't even know were in the original recording. I've been letting my coworkers demo them, and reactions have been consistently enthusiastic. In one recording I have, you can actually hear the orchestra members shifting in their seats during the lulls. Not in a distracting way, mind you, just in a "you are there" way.

Last night I managed to finally get 5 stars on all 40 songs of Guitar Hero 2 on medium difficulty. I went on to complete the first set of songs on hard. I don't think I could ever 5 star hard in a gajillion years. Literally. I've had multiple people ask me if guitar hero was teaching me to play the guitar, and every one of them loses interest in the subject when I tell them that it doesn't. Everyone seems to accept the fact that playing a snowboarding game on a game console will not make you a competent snowboarder or that a barnstorming game is not preparing you to be a pilot. Playing Galaga prepares me to be neither an astronaut nor an exterminator. It shouldn't really be a stretch to assume that the act of simulating an exciting activity is sufficient in itself to be worthwhile. Somehow, if the controller of a game vaguely resembles a guitar then it needs to have some additional life skill acquisition attached to it for them to care. I don't want to learn guitar right now. It's a real skill that requires a serious level of commitment for one to excel. I want to play "air guitar: the game." The key word there was "play."

Happy Birthday Lily!

My "Lilyest" is six years old today! She's been losing teeth like crazy lately (three in three days!) so she has a cute little cat smile.

Tonight Stef's Mom is coming over to take Lily out, as has become birthday tradition for our kids. We're probably going to have a little party with the neighborhood kids later in the week, then again over at my folks on the weekend.

Gaming Compeition

I'm not much of a competitive gamer. I participate when the people I know are involved, but I don't honestly do very well in competition. Today's happy fun time activities included a "World of Warcraft" card game tournament at work, followed by a Warmachine/Hordes tournament at Rider's in the evening. I did okay in the WoW tournament, earning a few booster packs as a prize, but I got totally smoked at Warmachine. Just like last time.

I like friendly pick-up games. Competition is mainly fun because you get to meet more people (can you believe I'm saying that as a positive?) I'd have to say that tonight's tournament was probably worth the $10 it cost to join, at least from the fun standpoint.

Peace. Movement.

I'm finding that I have very little stomach for commotion right now. Not that I ever have, mind you, but right now I'm especially nervous when things get crazy around me. With three kids of my own, a friend of ours who visits frequently with her four year old, two dogs who enjoy crashing through the house barking at just about anything and three neighborhood kids who would spend every waking moment at my house given the chance I find commotion to be my daily norm. Even my usual reprieve from chaos in the night hours is becoming hard to enjoy. I find that the commotion leaves me drained to the point where I'm too sleepy to really get anything done. I'm sure it's just a cyclical phase, but I feel like I'm at the bottom of the curve right now.

At this very moment, dear reader, my truck is getting fixed. Come to think of it, I don't really know when you will read this so I suppose my assertion probably isn't accurate. Suffice to say I will have my wheels back yet again sometime today. This will allow me to drive to the happy fun time events tomorrow, which I'm sure I will write about later.

Oooooh, Shiny

If you've been reading this blog lately (for something other than dance recital hairstyles or tortilla chips) you know that I've won >$400 worth of stuff so far as part of the White Dwarf magazine 30th anniversary celebration. Well, yesterday was the big event, in which a gold plated version of the White Dwarf miniature was given away... and I didn't win! Granted, I won at least $80 worth of other stuff, including an Ogre Tyrant and an Orc Warboss on Wyvern, but I didn't win the gold thingy. sigh.

One of the things I won (by spending money and getting a pull from a box of sprues, some of which are unreleased or limited edition) was this super shiny space marine trio. The sprue has been coated the same way that model car bumper sprues are coated, which makes them fairly different than any other marine sprue I've seen. What use are they, you ask? Got me. I'm eBaying them, along with a couple other sprues that Mark and I got yesterday.

While we were there, Mark and I played a (not so) quick 1k game of Warhammer, his new goblins vs. my Skaven. In a surprising 5th turn reversal, Mark panicked the unit containing my general such that they fled right through another of his units, killing all of my unit. It was very well executed, but also a little lucky. The only reason he was able to pull off the charge was because of a fortuitous animosity roll that pushed the charging unit forward into position. I also got a chance to feel everyone else's pain yesterday, as a unit of my Rat Ogres charged some weedy little goblins, then lost combat and ran. The sheer size of the goblin unit was enough to scare my huge Rat Ogres off, something I'm much more accustomed to doing to others with my large Skaven units than having done to me.

Mainstream

I started reading Manga (Japanese comics, literally "irresponsible pictures") and watching Anime (Japanese cartoons, the name being taken from the first three syllables of "animation") about twenty years ago. Back then it was definitely a small, subculture group. We watched fifth or sixth generation VHS copies of "Macross: Flashback 2012" at the clubhouse of the apartment complex that one of the members lived in. Good times.

Nowadays the style has become ubiquitous, parodied as much as imitated, but always as a subculture or youth oriented culture, despite the fact that Manga in Japan is targeted at all age groups. (Check out Frederick Shodt's "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" for a lot more info.) Well, today the front page of the Fox News web site had a picture that surprised me greatly. I took a screenshot for your benefit. The actual story can be found here.

Way back in the early 90's, Japanese publisher Viz Communications partnered with American publisher Eclipse Comics to publish a few Manga titles. Area 88, Xenon and Mai the Psychic Girl were published biweekly and quite inexpensive. I absolutely loved them. In the end, Viz terminated their relationship with Eclipse to go solo in the American market, proclaiming the coming explosion of anime/manga popularity over here. I don't things have exploded the way Viz wanted them to, but when the Japanese giving out a manga award makes the front page of a major news web site, Manga has officially been absorbed into our culture.

Orc Daddy Birthday

My kids are so cool. Wednesday was my birthday, and they decided to theme the envelopes for the cards they got me as "Orc Daddy Birthday" cards.

Sarah decided to get artistic, then spell out what was going on in case I missed it.


Lily went monochrome, with more lettering.


And Jay's included Orc D's, the girls explained.


My present from the kids and Stef was Guitar Hero 2 for my much neglected Playstation 2, and it is a hoot to play. The girls play it too by laying the guitar on the floor, one taking frets and one taking strumming. I should video it and post. It's quite entertaining.

Unlikey Event

As you may recall from my post last week, the girls and I won an Orcs & Goblins army box at the local games workshop store.

We won another one today, in the same sort of drawing. $430 worth of Warhammer figures in two weeks. It was a little embarrassing. Last week we received a lot of congratulations. This week a few people asked, "Didn't you win last week?" The plan now is to eBay the new box and buy a Tomb Kings army for the girls.

EDIT: eBay link. Since the army box contains a limited edition Orc Shaman, only available through this version of the army box, I'm hoping I can get a pretty good price for it. Wargamers tend to like limited edition figures, especially the ones that aren't available at retail anymore.

EDIT #2: I'm a little slow. I should have just declined the prize and let them give it to someone else. I was a little freaked out by the whole thing and it didn't even occur to me. In fact, I didn't even know that they were awarding another Orcs & Goblins box until they handed it to us. Now I feel really bad. I should have handled this better.

EDIT #3: A kid at the Games Workshop on 5/20 store echoed my own suspicions by telling me that I should not have taken it. One of the workers there immediately chimed in with the fact that this kid himself had won about $100 worth of stuff that day, so complaining seemed a little odd. The second army box, minus the limited edition shaman, have been traded away for a mess of Tomb Kings. The girls were geeked at the idea of having their own skeletal horde.

In Your Ample Free Time

My dad called a week or so to tell me that one of his favorite movies would be airing that evening. The 1946 movie, "The Best Years of Our Lives" tells of WWII veterans returning home and the way their lives have changed. I've wanted to see it for some time, and since this was a ready opportunity I set our DVR to record it.

The problem is that it's three hours long.

My television watching has been reduced to about two hours of scheduled time each week. Sure I watch more impromptu TV here and there (an episode of Wonder Pets with the kids, an episode of Futurama at 2:00 AM as I'm falling asleep, etc.) but the time I set aside for watching TV is pretty much just "Heroes" and "Lost", and even then we watch them from the DVR, so commercial time is cut out. I don't even really watch movies with Stef anymore, so to schedule a contiguous block of three hours is practically unthinkable nowadays.

I am considering going on a five night work schedule for my painting. Three nights of commission work for non-local people, one night of commission work for local people and one night for my own or eBay intended work. That leaves two nights a week that I could potentially watch a movie or something. I've told the DVR not to delete "The Best Years of Our Lives" and I really want to watch it. I think this five night schedule might be the best way.

The Big Box

Hey, remember the figures I said I was expecting? The ones that include 15 Harlequins? Well I only received 12 Harlequins... along with about 160 other models on foot and 18 vehicles in a huge box. Now this is a commission order.

I played Warmachine with Brian tonight. I got stomped twice in a row in a "mangled metal" scenario (only 'casters and 'jacks.) Whether Brian is just really good or I am just really bad remains to be seen. I fear the latter may be the case.

I've agreed to swap some Night Goblins of mine for an Orc Boar chariot for the girls' army. I just like to say it: "The Girls' Army."

EDIT: I actually did receive all 15 Harlequins, just packaged differently than I had expected. After a couple hours of cataloging last night, I count 25 vehicles/walkers (including 7 single rider jetbikes and 3 two-man jetbikes) and 150 infantry (about 125 of which are Eldar.) The last shipment of Eldar, 5 vehicles and about 65 infantry, took five months to complete.

Redefining "Automatic"

A coworker and I were discussing Internet Explorer 7 and he mentioned that it had been installed as a critical update from Microsoft on his machine, a method he was not entirely fond of. I seldom use IE at work so I decided to check my version to see if I had been updated on the sly. I had version 6. I was immediately curious because I have my computer set to automatically install updates every night. I verified that this setting was still set in control panel, and it was. Hmm. Ok. So I go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com to see what updates are available....

SEVENTY HIGH PRIORITY UPDATES

Sorry to yell like that. Seventy. Seven Zero. Despite the fact that Windows was set to install them nightly. Many of them were security updates as well. This is the computer security equivalent of walking into a room to find a person sleeping and a TV on, and when you turn off the TV the person says, "Hey! I was watching that." No you weren't. You were asleep. "Yeah, yeah..." Windows answers groggily, rubbing its eyes, "I was updating nightly."

Putting the "Back" in Backlog

I have a lot of work to do again. My own Space Marines and Menites are on the super-fast paint plan (along with prepping a unit of goblin wolf riders for the girls) before the next commission job gets here. I'm awaiting a few Cygnar figures, a bunch of Eldar (including 15 Harlequins!), some Sisters of Battle, some Dark Eldar and some Chaos.

At the same time, my friend and coworker Brian is pretty much divesting himself of all things Games Workshop. He's accumulated 5,000 points of Dark Elves and has offered to let me paint and sell them. That's hundreds more models to eBay if I want to take the time. Yikes.

Yes, folks, the backlog is back.

What's Gonna Work? Teamwork!

Okay, I admit it. My favorite show on TV right now is The Wonder Pets. I watch the adventures of Linny, Tuck and Ming Ming with my kids nearly every day, and I routinely walk around work singing the songs from the show. Yes, my coworkers are about to kill me. (And yes, "This is sewious.")

The show is created using "photo puppetry", sort of a frame by frame Photoshop-style compositing of photographs with some animation and CG effects. The episodes are all very musical, almost operetta in spoken to song ratio, and vary a great deal in musical styles presented. It has the predictable structure that young kids like so much combined with more complex concepts. I was able to explain foreshadowing to my 5-year old using the normal Wonder Pets episode structure.

More later? Maybe. Probably. Man I love that show.

Search Terms

I would like to welcome all viewers who arrive here searching for "Harry and David Multi Grain Tortilla Chips" or "Dance Recital Hairstyles." There are more of you than I would have suspected. I'm afraid you're going to be terribly disappointed.

I'm just some guy who write random stuff, mostly about his kids and his hobby.

The Big Winners!

Saturday was the big day at the local Games Workshop store. The staff at the new store had been handing out tickets for prize drawings since the day they opened, and Sarah, Lily and I had amassed quite a little stack of them. On Saturday at 2:00 PM local employee Marc reached into the box if tickets and pulled out one of ours! We had won an Orcs & Goblins army box! Contents of the box are pictured here (sorry for the small pic.) The people gathered offered much congratulations, and were a very positive bunch. I like that place more every day.

What we won:

• Orcs and Goblins army book
• 40 night goblins
• 20 orc warriors
• 1 orc boar chariot
• 10 black orcs
• 10 goblin wolf riders
• orc warboss on boar
• orc standard bearer
• orc shaman (limited release figure... only available in army box)
• goblin big boss

Retail price of the box: $215 !

The girls and I had talked it over before going there about both the chances of winning and what we would pick if they gave us the option to choose an army box. We had decided on Tomb Kings if they let us choose, but we are all terribly thrilled with the Orc army. (Plus, I should have remember that the army boxes are a fairly time sensitive things. They are only available for a few months at a time, then the next army's army box is released.) Considering that I already had a few units of goblins from a Battle for Skull Pass box that a coworker and I split, it makes for quite a sizable army.

Dissertations on the Inobvious

My girls have always been fond of explaining how things work. Sarah once gave one of our friends a twenty minute lecture on how tuna gets in the can. It therefore came as no surprise when my dad sent me this email today (Sarah and Lily spent the night there last night.)

At breakfast, Sarah and Lily and I were watching robins out
on the lawn, getting worms to eat.  I told Sarah that a
saying "the early bird catches the worm" actually applies
to humans who are rewarded for being the first to arrive at
a good opportunity.  Her response was that if she was a
mouse, she would rather be late to arrive at the cheese.
We then discussed why a trap causes this to be good sense,
and how bait connected to a trigger works.  Sarah then
described a manually-triggered mouse trap, and then ant
traps and also reasoned with me about using bait as poison
to be carried back to the ant nest.
Lily then drew how spiders can be killed by a poison fly
that when caught in the web is eaten, and the spider dies.
Her next trap design was for a flea.  After I left the
table, she continued on showing Diane how to trap a mantis
and then a scorpion.
Dad

One of our favorite "explanation" moments came when Sarah was about four. My dad noticed the squirrel feeder on our deck, and said "You have pet squirrels. My mom and dad used to eat squirrels." Sarah replied, "If you eat a pet squirrel, you will be filled with squirrel love."

Wow

A Games Workshop corporate store opened in my neighborhood. I decided to paint a figure for the single model category of a painting competition they were hosting, despite the fact that I had no entry prepared and less than a week to create one. I chose a Space Marine Captain in terminator armor that I could use with my Blood Ravens army, and ... drum roll please.... he won first place in his category! I've never won a painting contest before! Hooray for me! The "Best Overall" went to a squad of "Sisters of Battle" which were wonderfully painted in a turquoise scheme. They had amazing consistency and the faces were neat and varied and the prize was quite deserved. I need to get pictures of this fellow to enter into the Golden Toadstools this month... he's in the display case at the store so I don't know when I'll get a chance.

Eldar are, for all intents and purposes done. I have a single model to finish. Everything else is packaged and will be turned over to Angelos next time I see him.

I Love This State

It would have been nice if Christmas had been this white.

Some people complain about South Eastern Michigan's weather. They claim that it's too volatile and that the skies are gray almost all year. They complain about the fact that the temperature bounces around freezing all winter, which causes the roads to fall apart.

Personally, I like gray skies. I feel at my best when I don't have to squint. I like my light to be ambient.

Another mini... and false encouragement

I painted a Khador "manhunter" mini, and was pretty pleased at the end result. He is currently posted on CMON and getting savaged in the voting.

Stef and the kids were over at our friends' house for the night, and it was just me and the dogs. As I was pulling a handful of Harry & David multi grain tortilla chips from the bag, both dogs sat on the floor looking expectantly at me.

"I don't know what you're looking at, 'cause I'm not giving you anything," I said to them. At that exact moment I pulled a chip out of my handful of chips to eat, and two others accidentally came flying out of the handful to land exactly at the feet of each of the dogs. They each gobbled their chip, then followed me around until my chips were gone.

In Case You Were Wondering...

Never put an ice cube in a pan with hot oil in it "just to see what happens."

The mess is truly epic.

Water > Earth ... Varnish > Ink

The Odwalla truck fell through the earth today. It was backing up to the loading dock of the building in which I work, and its left rear tire fell through the pavement, revealing an extensive sink hole that goes under the building. Do you know whose office is right next to the loading dock? Yup. Good guess. Depending on the type of repair necessary, I'm guess I may have a move in my future. The current "story" is that there was a water main break, but honestly I think there would be more actual water evident if that was true.

Now, on to painting. Hey, guess what. Ink has no binder in it. I was reminded of this when I tried to use some brush on varnish over a freehand done in ink. I ended up with tinted varnish and no freehand. Anything worth doing once is worth doing twice, I suppose.

Dead Trucks and Improptu Haircuts

The truck's dead again. Yeah, it's sooner than I thought it would be too. I was headed home from Angelos' place last night when there was a loud pop and then a scraping noise. I knew immediately what had happened... a tie rod end had broken. The tie rod is what controls the direction of your front tires, so having one broken means that the associated tire is free to go where it pleases instead of obeying the tyranny of the steering mechanism. I had stopped for gas, so I was barely moving when it happened. I had it towed (once again) to Maynard's for repair.... $400 plus tax. Ouch.

I haven't had a haircut in a while. Wait, I guess I should say that I hadn't had a haircut in a while. This morning, as I was getting dressed, Stef beckoned me over to her desk. When I got there, she grabbed the hair on the side of my head and hacked it off with scissors. Then she turned me around and did the other side. I was a little stunned. Spring is here, so I suppose it's time to cut the hair and shave off the beard. Sigh.

Dance! Dance, I say!

My girls had a dance recital on Saturday. Technology invites you to see.

Sarah's Hip Hop Recital:


Lily's Ballet Recital:

Final Eldar Push

This weekend is the final push to get all Eldar done. Honestly, I don't think I'm going to get the Saim-Hann Autrarch done, but I will mail that to him separately.

It's been an awfully long job, and I've gone back and forth spending serious time on it. I'm glad it's finally getting shipped. Actually, the owner may have some more models he needs painted before Games Day, so I likely haven't seen the last of Eldar.

There's a huge Khador job coming down the pipe to paint in a record short amount of time. Angelos and I will be splitting it up to get it done. Expect WIP photos here. Oh, yes. Expect them.

M. Night Whatshisface

Stef and I watched "Lady in the Water" last night.

Wait, let me go back a little. Does anyone remember the teaser trailer for Lady in the Water? The one that doesn't really show much except the main character and some splashing, but ends with the question "How many of you are there?" I found that teaser very evocative, and I was greatly looking forward to this film.

Wait... let me go back a little more. Remember how great "The Sixth Sense" was, and how excited we all were to see the next movie by this mysterious new film maker with the odd name? We got Unbreakable.

Okay, back to the movie in question. After a teaser trailer that made me so eager to see this film, Lady in the Water was just.... awkward. It had way too much exposition, and while it had interesting characters I just don't feel like he did much with them. It would have made a much better novel, where the author has plenty of time to build minor characters until their moment of usefulness. When all you have is ninety minutes in which to work, that building process equates to about 15 seconds of screen time.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised though. M. Night S. has been hit and miss for movies. The Sixth Sense was amazing for pace and revelation. Unbreakable was moody, but seemed more like an undeveloped project than a follow up to such a huge success. Without Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson it would have been ignored. Signs was jumpy and creepy, but way too heavy handed and weakly ended. I don't have a lot of complaints about The Village; I rather enjoyed it, and felt like it lived up to its promise. Lady in the Water has an interesting monster, and I liked the main character Cleveland Heap, but other than that it just more or less failed to make me give a crap one way or the other about what happened. Advice for the millionaire filmmaker: make smaller stories. I can't really get excited about thing that will change the consciousness of all humanity. I want a story where interesting characters experience things and have them resolved in their own context. I'd take small and interesting to epic and vague any time. It shouldn't take an alien invasion to make a disillusioned preacher realize that events in his life have meaning. A girl from another world being pursued by a monster doesn't need to change the course of human history... just make us care about saving her.

Define "Cheap"

EMU has been trying to cut costs. One of the expenses chosen was departmental budgets for little niceties that employees have enjoyed, like coffee or a water cooler. We also used to have a cake once a month to celebrate the employees' birthdays for that month, but no longer. We now contribute $5/month to a coffee fund, and twelve volunteers were forced to bake a cake. Actually, the $5 is far more than we've actually been spending on coffee, so I suppose we'll have a little nest egg built up for when the coffee maker dies. It's one of those three-warmer models that has a direct water feed, and I'd hate to go back to a single pot that you have to pour water in the top of the thing to make coffee.

It's the cake thing that I find puzzling. Not EMU's cessation of providing cake, but my coworkers' lack of willingness to volunteer to bake one. Out of 40 or so employees in our little area, only five signed up for cake baking duty. We even have a departmental cake pan that requires two $1.50 cake mixes, plus frosting. I volunteered for March, and the whole operation took about an hour, from opening boxes to baking to frosting. In an attempt to inspire my coworkers, I wrote SIGN UP FOR APRIL in huge letters made of colored sugar crystals across the cake. No one has yet been inspired to do so.

He Probably Wasn't That Tall

Second 300 post. Deal with it.

Apparently the Iranians are upset because a movie based on a comic book based loosely on events of 2500 years ago portrays them poorly. Oh, sorry, I forgot to add that the bulk of the movie is actually one character retelling of these events, so add another layer of abstraction and exaggeration. Oh, no. What an insult.

Then again, if the Iranians made a movie wherein a nine foot tall androgynous George Washington attacked the middle east offering pleasures of the fleshly variety to those who would turn on their noble brothers, I think some people here might get a little upset.

I Learned a New Word

Saturday, my friend Mark and I went to see 300. It is based on the Battle of Thermopylae the same way many movies are based on the cover illustration of the novel with which they share a name. It was pure style, bloody and unabashedly direct. It mirrored everything I remember about Frank Miller's comics.

After the movie I decided to read a few things about 300, just to get some viewpoints. One columnist called it "as bloody as Apocalypto and twice as stupid," which made me laugh despite having never seen Apocalypto. The moment of education came when I read this word: warnography. It fits 300 perfectly. 300 relishes in every spear piercing torso, every severed limb, every drop of CG blood floating across the screen in this slow motion death dance with such a carnal sensuality that "explicit" doesn't convey the amplitude. This is the erotica of violence. Still, it was somehow cartoony, especially with the slow motion / real time cuts interspersing the fight scenes. It reminded me of Miller's "Hard Boiled" in that regard, which was so over the top violent that I couldn't always tell if the violence was satiric.

One interesting aspect was the portrayal of Persian King Xerxes. Since King Ahasuerus from the book of Esther is commonly thought to be one and the same as King Xerxes, it certainly shakes up my mental picture of the events in Esther to insert Frank Miller's Xerxes. So where did my vague images of ancient Persia originate? What would the Persian court have really been like then? We have our "biblical times" generic look and feel for an awfully wide range of times and places. I feel a bit inspired to look into things a bit more when I study them.

But not right now. I have painting to do.

Ya Buncha Fairies...

Ths weekend the girls and I started painting the same figure, a Fairy Princess by Reaper. Sarah (8) is painting the red one and Lily (5) is painting the purple one.

The first step was a basecoat in multiple, thin layers. This was difficult for them, since they have a hard time understanding anything but one coat coverage. After a couple coats they seemed to get it, although I don't think it looked better enough in their eyes to have bothered. We then tried a highlight layer in a lighter color. In both of their minis you can see the darker/lighter, which I think is pretty cool. I might do one more level of highlights with them, just on the extreme portions. I think we'll do skin after that.

Funny side note. While painting, Sarah became concerned. "Dad, is it okay to say 'breasts' when I talk about painting her?" "Yes, dear, it's fine."

Me != Winner

Okay, the guy I was bidding on here went for $40, a fair bit above what I could afford. Instead I bought a commercial grade fire extinguisher from someone at work for $25. Not quite the same, but a bit more useful in keeping my family safe.

Cutest Headbang Ever

Did I mention this one previously? hmmm

Go here: http://www.noggin.com/shows/jacks.php
Watch "Steve Burns and Steven Drozzt: I Hog the Ground"

It's about 34 seconds in.

Irritating Flashback

Ages ago I had an Atari 800XL home computer. Viva la 6502. One of the programs I had played a song called "Passionately" while displaying the lyrics, karaoke style. It was pretty cool at the time, but our coolness threshold with computers was a lot lower then.

Problem: I can't get that song out of my head today. It's even worst because I can half-remember the lyrics. The song is basically about someone who has been abandoned, and is waiting for their lover to phone. Now you are gone, and time just seems to drag on. Without your love, I could not live for too long.

All the while, a set of bars on the screen show the notes being played, including bends and vibrato. You have to admit, you and I fit... Passionately.

Grrr. Not being able to find a real copy of the lyrics keeps this song preserved in half-memory. Number was dialed wrong. For you I still long passionately.


EDIT: Check this out!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiX8Ba2L4u0

Good From Far

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting WIP shots here. Mark came over tonight, and while he started on Captain Rengrave I painted this fellow. I am really trying for extreme highlights, since this is a gaming piece. I want it to have maximum pop for minimum view time.

I really love Stef's new camera. Best. Snapshots. Ever.

The Opposite of Selling

No, I didn't paint this. For the first time ever, I am bidding on a painted mini on eBay. The painter, Shawn R.L., is a CMON regular whose work I have admired for some time, especially in the lighting simulation. Since I have never really seen a really well painted mini in person, I figured I would take a stab at buying this one with the meager funds in my paypal account.

Part of me wants to win. Part of me wants him to get $100 for it. It's a really nice looking mini.

Standing Water

So plans changed a little last night. Instead of finishing the Eldar infantry, I ended up helping my neighbor Don figure out why his basement was flooding. We figured out that it was because of the rain. Couple of geniuses.

It rained a lot here yesterday, and because the ground was still frozen from our cold snap last week the water just piled up on top of the ice. I oversimplified when I said that rain caused the flooding; it was really the 8 inches of standing water against Don's foundation, right where there was a crack. We ended up booking it out to Lowe's before they closed to buy 350 lbs. of sand to build up that low spot and hopefully send the water out in to the yard. It seemed to do the trick. In addition to the crack in the wall, his floor grate appeared to have backed up, which shouldn't really have been related to the rain. In any case, he got the clog out just before I arrived, so sanitizing the floor was the only issue there.


Isn't homeownership a hoot?

Behold My Top 5

Okay, nothing much in the way of updates. I found a way to display one's top 5 CoolMiniOrNot minis, so I included it on my blog here. It's on the right, a little ways down.

I still can't figure out why that Black Templar sergeant has the best score. Sadly enough it's probably more the subject matter than the paint job.

Side note: my spell checker doesn't like the word "Templar." It suggested, among other things, "Exemplariness" as a possible replacement. I cannot imagine a situation where using "exemplariness" would be the best word choice. Who knows? Maybe you, the reader, use it daily.

Wheels!

My truck is 12 years old and 30 miles shy of 100K. It still looks nice. It still seems to drive okay, especially for a 4-cylinder. It has been basic, reliable transportation for quite a while, and only the odd catalytic converter, muffler, blown gasket, etc., has kept it off the road.... until this past November. On the way home from work the battery light came on. I observed that the volt meter on my dash had dropped from its normal 15v or so to about 12v. Oops. I hypothesized that it was probably the alternator. We really didn't have the money to fix it with Christmas coming up, so it sat.

Last Sunday, my neighbor helped me out and took a look at the car. He surmised that the battery might be the issue, and took it to an auto parts store where they verified that the battery did indeed have a bad cell. I bought a new battery, and the volt meter was back up at 15v! Hooray!

Based on how much text is left in this entry, you can probably guess that new battery is not end of story.

Within a day of driving, the voltmeter dropped back to 12v and the battery light was on. I figured what the heck... I'm gonna drive it to work and see what happens. All week long the truck took me back and forth to work without issue. Even starting the truck was unchanged. My (faulty) logic was that if the battery was draining then starting should sound progressively more strained over the course of the week.

My coworker Buck invited me to go hear Scott Hahn speak. On Saturday morning I was driving out to meet Buck when things turned significantly south for the truck. The volt meter started a steady downward trend... 12v... 11v....10v.... uh, oh..... 9v. I start looking for an exit so I'm not stuck on the side of the road. Ah! Zeeb Rd. Good. As I approach, the engine RPM's to maintain speed increase, and I'm now fearful that the transmission is failing as well. I manage to nurse it into a parking lot off Zeeb Rd and give Stef a call. She comes out and charges the battery for me for a while so that I can try to nurse it home. I get as far as the freeway before it quite enthusiastically dies on me.

It was about 10am when I hit Zeeb Rd. It was about 3:00pm when the tow truck pulled up to my house. I missed the Scott Hahn thing (grumble) of which Buck gave rave reviews this morning. Sunday, neighbor Brian and I changed my alternator in the freezing rain. Well, it was more him doing the work and me squinting and handing him tools, but I learned a fair bit. We took the old alternator to the auto parts store to make sure it was bad, and it failed all the tests... whew. If it had passed we would have been quite puzzled.

But now, drum roll please, the truck is really fixed! I have my wheels again!

Warm and Fuzzy Details

I worked for hours on that one eye. I wanted it to be squinty rather than wide open like many others are done. If this fellow was going to wear bunny slippers, then he was going to look grumpy, not crazed.

The slippers eyes are sculpted as buttons. I highlighted the rim edges of the button to emphasize the depth, but I think the button holes got lost a little in there.

I think sometimes the scale of these things is lost on the non-miniature painter. They are small.

Warm and Fuzzy

So, I got around to painting the free Night Goblin that came with White Dwarf magazine months ago. One of my coworkers suggested bunny slippers over the regular cloth boots, and I just had to give it a shot.

I'm selling it on eBay as well. After all, what use have I for a single Night Goblin wearing bunny slippers? Hopefully someone with a real Orcs and Goblins army will pick him up. The sad part is that after being up on eBay for a good 12 hours at a paltry $0.01 starting bid, I haven't gotten a single bid.

Borrowed!

I've borrowed a digital camera, and taken a wip pic of one of the Wraithlords that I'm painting for the Eldar commission army.

So behold the first photo I have included in ages on this blog. Yes, I know the gems on the gun are unfinished.

Smoked, then Soaked

So Saturday was the first Warmachine/Hordes tournament around here. I ponied up the $5 to enter, then played for a good six hours at the local hobby shop. Of the four matches I played, I only won one of them.

In game 1, an assassination scenario, I managed to trap the enemy warlock between two sets of troops, but then failed to roll any significant damage. Sigh. In game 2, a land grab against my regular opponent Brian, neither of us gained any points for grabbing land and he won by kicking the crap out of everything I owned. In game 3, in which the object was to control three specific spots on the table for as many turns as possible, my opponent could not overcome my numerous infantry and I won. Game 4 was another assassination scenario, and I nearly, nearly won.

So more about game 4. Each game goes on for one hour, and then "last round" is called. If the player who went first is playing when last round is called, then the other players gets a turn and the game is over. If the player who went second is playing when last round is called, then the game is over at the end of his (I'd say "or her", but who are we kidding?) turn. If neither player has accomplished the scenario objective by the end of the game, then the player who scored the most victory points (by destroying enemy units) wins. As the end of the game was approaching, I was vastly ahead in victory points and in position to blast the two threats nearest my warcaster (the object of my opponent's assassination plans) and then kill his warcaster with my own troops near the other side of the board. My warcaster easily blasted one of the threats (a Skarlock Thrall for those Warmachine players) but I totally forgot to blast the other, and more serious, threat... a Pistol Wraith! I then proceeded to somehow not kill Skarre, his warcaster, thanks to some record breakingly bad rolls. On his turn, he stepped up and
popped my poor Grand Scrutator Severious, rolling very high damage and killing the old man. If I hadn't forgotten to blast that thing I would have won game 4, and put myself in the running for maybe third place in the tournament. Oops.

Okay, enough wargaming talk. That was the "smoked" part. On to the "soaked" part.

After coming home from small group last night and putting the kids to bed, I was in the kitchen and heard a faint trickling sound. Not faint like a small trickling, but faint like a pretty strong trickling at a distance. A little investigation indicated that the sound was emanating from the basement, and my first thought was that a pipe had burst. It wasn't a burst pipe. It was water pouring from the temperature/pressure relief valve on my water heater. I looked around for a bucket to catch the scalding stream, but apparently all of the buckets had made their winter migration south. I ended up dumping toys out of a plastic toy bin and using that, all the while standing in my socks in the pool of water that had formed on the floor. I figured adding cold water to the water heater would alleviate the over temperature, so I had Stef run the tub hot (which later resulted in a bath for her. Silver lining.) The pouring water reduced to a trickle, then stopped entirely, but not before the bottom drywall of our bathroom down there got pretty soaked. Whee. I ended up lowing the temperature on the water heater, which somehow was up at "B"...for what that's worth.

Aught Seven tain't no Ninety Four

It's cold here. Really cold.

Let's talk about how cold it is, shall we? I think we'd all agree that 32 degrees is rather cold, right? I mean, we can all agree that ice is cold, can't we? In addition, I'll assert that 70 degrees F is a pleasant spring day, and even rather warm for a summer night. 70-32 = 38. So the difference between a nice spring day and cold is a differential of about 38 degrees.

This morning it was -7 when I got up. -7 - 32 = 39 degrees. The difference between cold and the bitter cold of this morning was the same differential as between cold and a pleasant spring day. Yeah, it's cold.

As cold as it is, it doesn't compare to 1994. I was working midnights in EMU's operations department when the temperature was down in the -20 range for nearly a week. Just walking from the car to the office left me aching from the cold. It's not like To Build a Fire or something, where spit freezes in mid-air, but it was cold. Far colder than today. And today is cold.

Free At Last

I have a secret to divulge... I don't much like rap. That isn't to say that the style as a whole offends me or that I "don't consider it music", but the genre typically just fails to enthuse me in any way. Granted, my exposure to rap has been mostly through the speakers of cars in which I am not riding, or as played by my college suite mate. Most of what I have heard has been either unintelligible or quite profane. I have found most of the rap interludes in popular culture to be typically inoffensive, but rap as a pure genre has never held appeal for me.

I'd like to say that my dislike of rap was based solely on its own merits, but there's a tiny little voice that still wondered if I just didn't like it because of how black it was. Since much of the music I listen to is performed by black artists (albeit from prior decades) I would have thought not, but a hint of the question remained.

Well, this week I got my answer to that question. Ladies and gentlemen, make rap as white as you want and I will still not like it. I present for you Nerdcore. I can now unabashedly say that a bunch of nerdy white guys rapping about video games or computers is just as uninteresting to me as any gansta diatribe.

I feel oddly liberated by Nerdcore. I am now free to not like rap as much as I want, and never feel the need to, say, make token attempts to appreciate it for its cultural significance like some condescending amateur anthropologist all pepped on on NPR. It's just music and I'm not particularly fond of that type of music.

Birthday, plus Nervous Peer Pressure

Yesterday my dear Sarah turned eight years old. We had a small party at the house in the late evening with a couple friends from the neighborhood, and will be celebrating again this Saturday at my parent's house with the cousins. I was really struck yesterday with the fact that she's turning the corner from small child to young lady. Yes, she still likes to play with baby dolls (she's always been a nurturer) but I can start to see what teenage Sarah is going to be like.

I call Sarah and Lily "my lovelies."

While driving to get the fruit tart that Sarah wanted as her cake, I noticed that gas stations couldn't decide if they wanted the price raised or not. I observed a differential of 36 cents, with some stations right next door to each other having a six or seven cent difference. I'd say that it was related to location, but the gas station nearest me, normally quite cheap, was one of the highest priced. It almost seemed as if there had been a little "price change panic" as one gas station raised their price significantly, then others reacted to it. The high/low price yesterday was $1.899 and $2.259 for regular unleaded. (What's the point of saying unleaded at this point? It's like pointing out that your grocery store milk is homogenized.)

Light at the End of the Tunnel

I haven't been posting a lot of pictures of my painting lately (for partial explanation, see post "The Critical Missing Piece" below.) I've been working on a large commission work for the past six weeks or so. The order is two complete Eldar army boxes, and I'm just now getting to the point where the end is in sight. I have all the infantry (sans one lone commander figure) assembled, and some of them are primed and basecoated. Tonight I finished assembling the two Vyper jetbikes, and that leaves only the two Falcon grav tanks to assemble. Yes, there will be a fair bit of painting after that, but the end is finally in sight.

In other painting news, the fellow who commissioned the two Cygnar jacks was very happy with the work, and will probably be sending me more painting after I finish my current backlog. I painted up Skorne warlock Makeda and gave her to Angelos (to sell or keep as he sees fit) as a thank you for sending so much commission work my way.

Speaking of which... the current backlog:
Skorne starter box
Skorne Titan Cannoneer
Skorne Praetorian unit (6)
about 50 dwarfs

...and that's it! I may be able to paint a few figures of my own soon!

Raise Your Lighter

I played Guitar Hero 2 at my brother's house for hours yesterday. It is, without a doubt, the most fun I have had playing a video game in at least a year.

The game has deceptively simple mechanics. On a guitar shaped controller are five colored button, each taking up a single fret. Where one would normally strum the guitar is a bar that can be moved with a roughly strum-like motion. The game is played by matching a series of colored notes (colors) coming down the screen, ensuring that the correctly colored key is pressed and that the bar is hit at the correct time.

Dave has had the game since Christmas, and is quite good at it on medium difficulty. I tried several songs, but then had to try the ultimate guitar anthem: Freebird. I got booed off the stage. Twice. I took quite a liking to "Heart Shaped Box" by Nirvana and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" by the Rolling Stones. At least the crowd let me finish those.

Stef's response to seeing me play: "I know what you're getting for your birthday."
(come on birthday!)

Grow Up

No commercial gets my hackles up like the Gerber "Grow Up" Plan. All the talk in the commercial is about protecting your baby's future, but all they are selling is a life insurance policy for your child. Do you know who my life insurance policy doesn't protect? Me, that's who.

Okay, pop quiz: Does the policy pay off if the child does or doesn't grow up?

If some universal rule had been discovered ("Murphy's Law"?) that made some event less likely the more you plan for it, then this policy would indeed be a way to increase the survivability of your child. As it is, it's pretty much just funeral insurance.

(In their defense, they have recently added a section to the commercial that explains that they are selling life insurance, but the focus of the commercial remains on protecting your child for the future.)

<$2 w00t!

Last night when I drove home from work gas was $1.999!!! This morning when I drove in, gas was $1.969! Wah hoo!

In the immediate wake of 9/11, some gas stations in Michigan jacked prices up in anticipation of a panic reaction. Some stations were as high as $5. In reaction, the Michigan Attorney General promised to prosecute gas stations that gouged consumers at that time. His definition of gouging was $2/gallon.

I'm oddly thrilled that we're down to what was considered a criminal price gouge only five years ago.

The Critical Missing Piece

I'm almost done with the Wraithlord for an Eldar commission army. Last night I wanted to take a quick picture for the photobucket "work in progress" album, but discovered that the memory card from my digital camera was missing. Last I remember, I had it plugged into the front of Stef's computer to upload some pictures I have taken.

Stef's computer sits on the floor.
...where Jay can reach it.

Uh, oh.

Breakfast Showdown

Reese's Puffs cereal by General Mills

• 13 servings per 14.25 oz box
• 120 calories per serving
• 3.5g fat per serving (1g saturated)
• 180mg sodium
  
• 22g carbs (1g fiber, 12g sugars)
• 2g protein
• 10-25% of vitamins A,C,D,B and a bunch of minerals
  
• $4.29 at Meijer yesterday
  

Kroger brand Christmas Butter Cookies

• 14 servings per 14 oz box
• 120 calories per serving
• 3g fat per serving (0.5g saturated)
• 125mg sodium
• 21g carbs (<1g fiber, 6g sugars)
  
• 2g protein
• no pretense of any nutritional value
  
• $1 before Christmas. I think they're 50% off now.

I suppose if I was using a breakfast cereal as my primary source of vitamins and minerals, the Reese's Puffs come out the winner. I should buy Cookie Crisp for the next showdown. It will be fun to see how it fares against actual cookies.