Monday, March 26, 2007

Photos are up!


So, I have been expanding my ever-so-useful Google Account to now include Picassa Photo albums... a very cool tool that integrates very well with Blogger, GMail, and makes it very easy to upload/modify/share pictures. Lets you add captions and lets people leave comments on them. Highly recommended. (though if you have Blogger, you already know that..) :P

I have a public album of my Warmachine painted figs up there now, so you can take a look. Most were painted a year or so ago, and I do say I have gotten better since... Hopefully soon I will get a Hordes folder up there too as well as more Warmachine pics. (I gotta take the pictures first though...)

You can see it here.

Also have some really awesome Star Wars photographs up there as well, taken by Cedric Delvaux.

I'll be putting more photos up as I get around to it..

MTFBWY, till later.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

returning from the nether...

Hello everybody! (not that anyone actually reads this thing...but if you do, let me know)

So... I completely failed at keeping up with my New Year's post (see below) and have not updated anything! But, I am still here, and I do plan on keeping up with this more. I just need to find the right rhythm... and find some things to talk about. (which is always the problem with me... I guess I find my life too boring to talk about most of the time - not alot exciting happens to me here in Bally, ya' know?)

Things are going well. Work is as it has always been. We seem to be busier than we usually are, which makes the days go by faster. (and is , of course, good for the company...) I am still no where near where I need to be financially to get my own place.. but I am committed to moving in somewhere in the Fall. So that means not alot of spending... and alot of bill paying and saving. (neither of which I am good at) I will have to cut back on the Star Wars collectibles, I have some stuff pre-ordered... (stuff from SideShow and Gentle Giant) but I am gonna cut myself off after those. I will be grabbing up some more Hordes models, but I am almost finished with my army until the new expansion releases. So the rest of the cash will go to Mr. Credit Card and Mr. Bank Account and hopefully I will have enough by summer's end to make the move and purchase a vehicle.

GenCon throws another wrench... it costs money and comes at the end of the summer. But the trip is already partially paid-for; and I wouldn't miss GenCon for anything. This year's trip was a bit "up in the air" for a while. My dear friend Jason is currently living in Santiago, Chile. (The blog of his South American adventures can be found here) We were unsure if he would be able to make the trip, and much to our excitement, he will. Its also a blessing to us for without his organizational skills our trip would be a disaster =D And it will be good to see him again. We also have a 5th person joining us, a GenCon virgin, our pal Rob. (and my good WoW companion, Lokron).. not sure how that will impact the trip.. 2 cars? squeezing another into the hotel room?.. tricky things to plan out when you are trying to conserve money. But regardless, it will be a blast! (GenCon always is) The games, the atmosphere, the new stuff, and of course, the companionship, which is where the real fun of GenCon is found.

In local gaming news.. we will have our first Iron Kingdoms game next month.. I am very much looking forward to getting things rolling. This will be my first real time helming a 3rd Edition DnD game.. so here's hoping I don't let my players down, =/ I think it will be fun. I haven't been able to flex my role-playing muscles in a while, so I am ecstatic to get to play Dungeons and Dragons once again, even if it is infrequently. The story should be pretty cool. We have an interesting bunch of characters and hopefully my ideas will hold up and everyone will have fun. This campaign will feature the exploits of a Trollkin Fellcaller, a Nyss Scout, a Rynnish GunMage, and a Gobber Bodger (party roster subject to change at any time with out notice)

In WoW news.. Pondrepof the Orc Shaman has finally hit level 70! Yay! I have really enjoyed the new content in Outland, and the new spells are great.. the Earth/Fire Elemental Totems are very cool, and Bloodlust is the Bee's Knees. Now I am working on saving up the cash to get my flying mount, and then.. well... who knows. But 2 years later.. I am still having lots of fun with this game with no end in sight.

I also enjoy the wonders of the XBox 360 and the XBox Live Arcade. I love trying demos of the games, and have bought several.. including the fantastic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, widely regarded as the best in the series. It is a blast, and a total recall to the 2D adventure days.. a great buy at only $10 (or 800 Microsoft Points) And I am still addicted to Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved... my pitiful high score of about 130,000 mocks me everyday... and adding to my saving money woes... we have a ton of top tier games on the horizon... Mass Effect, Shadowrun, Bioshock, Halo 3, Virtua Fighter 5,... and I know there are a few more...

So, life continues ever onward.. I find myself, even though I live with family, often feeling lonely. Maybe it's the lack of like-minded friends being readily available, and combine that with the lack of romantic companionship, can make one feel lonely even in a crowd. Well, it makes me feel lonely anyways.. that whole bit may have not even made sense.. did it? I find myself making concertive efforts to check the finger of attractive women who come into our store, since 99% of the most attractive of them are married. Actually most of the time they come in with little children clinging to them, so checking their fingers for rings isn't required. But its all for naught.. even if I did find a pretty girl without a ring, what the hell am I gonna say while I am working? (and work is only time I really have any interaction with people outside my family) I guess I could wait until they leave, look up their number in our database and call them later...
"Hi , you don't know me, but you came into our store today and I thought you were cute and seemed like a nice person, and thought maybe we could get together some time.. eh? We have your name, address, and phone number saved in our computer here at the store, so I just looked it up after you left earlier today.. wasn't that pro-active of me?" and at that point I would hear the *click*... LOL, talk about borderline stalker... yeah, that's not a good idea. I have at times, thought about joining one of those online dating sites, you know, the high profile ones like eHarmony.com or Match.com.. but crap, they cost like $100 for membership.. geezus... I'm not that desperate... am I?

Si, I spend my time dabbling in WoW, playing 360, doing some reading (currently reading Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman), painting miniatures, trying vainly to organize my Star Wars collection (I have a Google Spreadsheet underway that will eventually catalog my whole collection), and working on the IK adventures... so pretty much entirely geek stuff. In other words, just being myself. I also listen to a surprising amount of podcasts... everything from videogames (look no further than 1Up Yours and The 1Up Show), to anime, to Star Wars (SWAN), and back again... thoroughly enjoyable and great for when you are painting miniatures. :) And I have been watching a couple TV shows, the wonderful epic Rome on HBO, and what could very well be one of my favorite TV shows ever, BSG. However, this week is the season finale of BSG and there won't be any new episodes till 2008! G'ah! What a horrible long wait!... thankfully iTunes has Firefly on tap, which will be my next show... as well as anime! (yes, anime on iTunes!) They have several new anime shows which look pretty cool (Gunslinger Girl, Speed Grapher) , so I will be checking those out as well.

Well.. that's a good long post to get me going again... I still plan on trying to put some stuff up on my 1Up page and get back to the Star Wars blog too... I will keep ya posted.