No TAL. I'm not doing it - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/139/ghosts-of-elections-past

No TAL. Shame on you. You know better than recycling things that you've already produced and I've already written.

You were lazy and didn't create anything new, which means I get to be lazy and not create anything new.

A Real Mormon - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/138/the-real-thing

One of the things I've learned while trying to survive here in Utah is that I can't stand a 'real' mormon.

I've been a member of the church my entire life, I've been around people that believe in the religion and exposed to all sorts of thoughts and opinions about that faith from all of them at different times and in different amounts, but if there's one thing that I can't stand, it's the idea that some of these people here have in their minds have of what it takes to be a 'real' mormon.

My religion is supposed to help guide and influence my life. It's supposed to be something that helps me understand my world and make sense of what I'm doing. Religion, no matter what faith or denomination you're sitting with is supposed to give purpose and understanding to what is happening in your life and what is going on around you. Religion is not meant to be consuming. As far as I'm concerned, religion is there to help me to become a better me, not to overtake who I am and what I do every day.

Unfortunately 'real' mormons become enveloped by the culture.

This goes beyond basic things like reading scriptures, or saying prayers, but rather turns into an entire life wide consumption that overwhelms them. They listen only to religious music, they watch only religious shows, they eat, drink, sleep, live everything that is religion. They become fanatics that have no life outside of the church and the doctrine that is there, which means that they have no identity other than religion. When you ask them about hobbies or passions, their only response is church.

I'm sorry, but I'll never be able to do that.

I'm me. I can't be a 'real' mormon. I can't strip out all of the things that I enjoy that are actually fun and not oposing the doctrine of the church, just because it's not Jesus time 24/7. I'm going to listen to the music that I like, because I don't think that it's Satan's music. I'm going to play the games I like, because they're fun even though they're not Jesus themed. I am always going to be me. I can't strip who I am.


The perfect, ideal, socially accepted Mormon is something that I will never be. I like the church, and I know the truth that is inside of it, but I also know me. I am not going to sacrifice everything just to hit an ideal that is only a social construct and is not supported anywhere within the actual doctrine.

Finished - Tzeentch Daemon Prince

Here he is, all finished. Missing basing, but I do that in large chunks and don't have enough ready to base right now, so for now, he's finished!

Tzeentch Daemon Prince Update

Worked on him a bit tonight, and I've got to say that Hanz is starting to look pretty good. Looking at his face in the picture I realize that I'll have to go in and do some work, give him glowing eyes or something, but for the most part, the color blending is going well, and making him a good, one of a kind, piece.

I think that's what keeps me interested in the painting side of this whole hobby, that I can do it my way, and even if the units are similar to someone else's list, the actual army is all mine and unlike anything else out there.

Tzeentch Daemon Prince (Hans)

I finally got started on the details of Hans tonight. His loincloth and then his tattoos got the fade treatment to match the rest of the army.

As for why he's named Hans, I happen to have a second deamon sitting to the side ready to destroy some army men. I was talking to Josh a while ago about the dynamic duo of two daemon princess leading my army (and eating up way too many points) when he jokingly said that I should name them Hans and Franz, and so they were named, ready to pump you up.

Either way, it's nice to finally get some detail into Hans. He's been sitting on my desk for far too long with the most basic of paint jobs. Most of him I'm not too afraid of, but his wings are what are frightening. I decided to do the color blend on the veins of his wings. They're thin, and surrounded by the flesh of the wing, so not too forgiving. Then I'm even thinking of throwing in a blue blend on the wings, but it depends on how masochistic I'm feeling when I get there.

Either way, it's nice to be back on the painting bandwagon. I'm thinking I'll post on here fairly often just to keep myself motivated to continue painting.

Finished - Thousand Sons Helbrute

Here he is finally finished. Only 100 points,  but easily one of the more challenging models. Notable fun facts, I had to give it a new face because the person I got it from somehow managed to lose the face even though the model was assembled, so thank you to my endless ghoul heads I have from fantasy for stepping in and being a helbrute. Also, unlike the entire army, this is also my first time trying to guess at what skin tone a monster demon machine taken over by tzeentch would look like. Apparently pale blue is the answer for that one.

Either way, I'm happy I got to finally practice horns thanks to this guy, and also ridiculously happy he didn't have as much armor as you'd guess so there was almost no need to edge highlight.

Now onto the first daemon prince.

Thousand sons helbrute

I haven't posted a progress picture of what I'm working on lately. Here's my helbrute that's going pretty well, tonight was my first try at horns with the brown to ivory fade, which didn't turn out half bad if you ask me.

It's Supposed to be Fun

We're going to take a break and have fun for a second, but with very rigid, boring rules. As long as you follow the rigid rules, you too, can have fun.

A person invited me into a D&D group, and we've only done character creation and I already want to shoot myself.

Let's remember, that making a level 5 character, should, in theory, take a grand total of about no time at all. 10,000 gold to spend, you roll a grand total of ten sets of dice (6 4d6 for stats, and 4 HD dice for HP) and you should be done. Buying things should just be letting people run around and get whatever they want, and there's a grand total of three feats that you should have to worry about getting.

That's it.

Nothing too complicated, nothing too mind numbing, and certainly nothing that should last for almost three hours.

Apparently, that's not enough "fun" because I didn't look at EVERYTHING at every single step.

The guy who's our DM thinks it'll be fun to invite our wives to play with us. I love Alicia, but there's not a chance in the world that she'll enjoy D&D. She did it once, when we were younger just because she wanted to hang out and have fun, but she didn't do it because she loves reading through text books of rules that do nothing but tell you about all of the rules you could follow. She does it to interact, laugh, and have fun. His wife, is in the exact same boat. They're not super nerds.

He is treating it like it is the most serious game that he is ever going to play, and instead of keeping things as simple as he can, he's making them more convoluted and complex than he possibly can handle.

Let's start work this out together, just so you can see the stupid that he ran last night trying to bore me to death. Honestly, if last night was my introduction to the game, I would never play.

The first thing you have to do is figure out what race you are. Normally there's only a few options, human, half elf, elf, halfling, gnome, dwarf, and half orc are your only options. When he asked his wife what race she wanted to be, she asked the response of what her options was. Instead of sticking her with those options and giving BRIEF summaries of who they are, he started with fayes, minataurs, pucks, pixies, half celestials, dragons, and pretty much anything else other than what anyone would consider normal. With each introduction of a new race, he would give a full historical background of who they were, what to expect out of both genders within that race, assuming that that race had genders, and the full social complexity that we would never worry about.

The same thing happened with classes. "What class do you want to be?"

"What are my options?"

"Well. . . " cue a montage of a detailed historical background of classes and talking about things that could only happen at maximum level with unlimited gold to spend on items.

And then he decided to build her backwards. "What skills do you want?"

"What does that mean? Just put them in whatever will help me the most."

Cue another montage of detailed descriptions of skill rolls that his wife will never use or see. The amount of useless information was at a new time high.

"What armor do you want?"

You guessed it! Another montage of going through every single armor option that he could find.

This went on through every single element of character creation. Weapon, feats, magical items, known languages, gear, and everything else that you ever wanted to see about dungeons and dragons was brought up in VIVID explicit detail.

He is basically setting things up for the most high of high adventures. In his mind we are living the ultimate extreme fantasy story of all history, and what he doesn't understand is that's not what his players want.

To put it into gamer terms, he's running a AAA game with a minimum of 40 mods on it, plus a full DLC patch, on the most updated top tier over clocked gaming system . . . and the rest of the people that he's playing with just want to open up Microsoft Hearts and play a few rounds, and any time that we're not on board with his view of how D&D should be played, he's not having it.

This lead me to setting up everything that I could, in my best way possible, to screw up his plan. If there's anything that a DM like him loves, it's character based rich background motivation. My character is a nomad that worships the diety of travel. My wife's character is a druid who also worships travel and seeing new parts of nature. Neither of us have a connection to any part of the story line that he's going to throw at us, and I will walk away from his forced story line in a heart beat because I want to show him that D&D is supposed to be player driven, not DM driven. Players want to have fun, relax, and enjoy a good time together. They do not want to be told about the stupidity that is trying to sort out whatever it was that he was doing. 

One Piece At A Time - Warhammer

I've been overwhelmed with things right now when it comes to the hobby. Instead of dealing with one thing at a time, I let myself start to see the big picture, and that's dangerous.

As you know, maybe, I got my army off ebay which means that I got a lot of assembled things, and only painted things as I needed them for the escalation league. I got my primary army, and instead of stopping there I realized that I had more figures to paint, and so I just dove in and started to paint. The only problem with that is that before I was painting with a purpose. I painted my terminators because I needed a terminator force. I painted my thousand sons because I wanted thousand sons. I did everything because I wanted to have it as part of my army.

Now I have figures, and they need to be painted, but I'm not painting with any purpose, so I'm just looking at this stack of figures and having no desire to ever paint them because I don't know if or how they'll even fit into the bigger picture of the army.

Today, instead of focusing on the mob of everything (1 hell brute, 23 CSM marines, 10 thousand sons, 2 daemon princes, 3 rhinos, some chosen, another terminator lord, and a few possessed) I stopped worrying about all of them and put all of my attention onto the hellbrute, and only focused on that.

In one day I've done more work on that hellbrute than I have in the months that it's been sitting on my desk staring at me. Instead of trying to understand it in the big picutre, the only way I've gotten any damage done on the figure is going piece by piece.

Take that for what you will.

Dragon Sleeping - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/137/the-book-that-changed-your-life

I knew that I liked writing, and I knew that I liked books for a long time, but I didn't know what I should do with them or if I was actually any good with it until about 8th grade. In 8th grade I got sick. Sick enough that my mom got in touch with my teachers and asked for homework for me to do while I was healing up.

For my English class I was given a book report that I had to write on a book of my choice. The only catch was that at the end of the report I was expected to do one of a few projects. The only problem was that when I read it, I skimmed things, or it was just poorly worded and instead of doing only one of the assignments, I did all of them. I wrote an interview with one of the characters, I wrote a chapter to the book from a different character's point of view, I even re-wrote the ending of the entire novel, and I did it because I was sick, and because I enjoyed it.

The book in question? Dragon Sleeping by Craig Shaw Gardner.
https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Sleeping-Circle-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B019UV7EE4#nav-subnav

That's the book that changed my life. That's the book that made me start to really like literature because it was a story that I understood, it was a story type that made me interested in what was going on, and it made me realize that reading could do a bit more than just spout out information at a teacher and get a grade on it.

The book itself is about a group of people from a suburb community and how they get sucked into a high fantasy setting with wizards and of course dragons. They get sucked into the world of magic and mystical creatures, and they look at everything like they're still part of their suburban world, and I loved it. I say that I write urban fantasy, and this book is the prime example that I give people when they ask what urban fantasy is. It's a perfect mix of things that are supernatural and weird, and yet perfectly average for the rest of us. It's suburban life and parents worrying about their kids, while their kids run around and get in trouble with elemental forces and magic, and I loved it.

This was the book that took all of my fantasies about day to day life, and how it was just a bit different than normal, and gave it a place to run around. My day dreams, my stories that I really want to write are always about the real world, but with just a hint of the crazy in there. I never want to write a 'typical' story, I always have to add in something different, I have to add in a different way to see the world because that's how I see it. I can't see a typical setting, I have to see something that's atypical, and this is the book that let me see it that way.

This is the book that put me into the world of literature and writing. This is the type of book that I want to write. Maybe not this exact style, and maybe with my own quirks and flavors on it, but this is the book that showed me that I can write my stories and maybe, just possibly, someone will read it.

Get Lost - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/136/you-are-here

I knew who I was, where I was, and what was going on in my life more in a different country dealing with complete strangers in a language that I hardly knew, than I do as an adult.

My time in Sweden was filled with a lot of times getting lost. This had a healthy amount of it dealing with the fact that my president, the guy in charge of telling us where to go and what to do, was known under the nickname of "Wildcard Karlsson" because he would do the most backwards, off the charts, weird things when moving missionaries around. His calling card move was the double transfer. This is when he would take two missionaries that had gotten to know an area, had worked with the people there, gotten to gain the trust of the investigators, members, and potentially the town drunks, and then rip them away and plop two new missionaries in the exact same area.

This happened often enough that I became used to the fact that the first time in any area was a guessing game from both me and my companion of where we were supposed to go, who we were supposed to meet with, and we were going to be lucky if we made it home anywhere close in time to get dinner in our stomachs.I got lost on my way to my own apartment so many times, simply because the area was new for both me and the guy I was with, and we got lost. We'd get turned around, sit on the wrong bus, not know the schedule for the buses on holidays and how they were different than normal days, and the list goes on.

Even though I got turned around, lost, and was living in a different world that wanted nothing to do with me, I didn't feel lost.

I think a large part of that not feeling lost even though I was physically lost, was the fact that there were rules. There were such strict rules and regulations for us as missionaries that I could be put in the weirdest situation ever and I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. If WWIII broke out and I had to abandon Sweden, I knew the exact rules of which train I should get on, which chapel to meet at, and where to go. I knew what I should do if my companion ever got lost without me. I knew what I should do if I got mugged. I knew what I should do, when I should do it, and how I should do it. I had rules about everything and in that light, I got to understand why people join the army.

I always hated the idea of the armed forces. In a way, I still hate it a bit.

I don't know what it is, but taking away people's individuality and 'breaking' them into something that you want and essentially taking away their idea to rationally process or answer anything for themselves is really scary for me. There is no room for questioning, it is only sir, yes sir. Say what you will about Hollywood actors that can ask for the permission to speak freely, in war you don't get to play that game. You have orders and you follow them, simply because some guy told you to do it. There are rules and you have to follow them or you, and the people around you die.

I used to wonder why anyone would ever want to have that life; why anyone would want to give up their ability to think, question, and understand the world.  I never understood it, but the brief glimse I got of it in Sweden, it makes sense. Places like that are comfortable. You don't have to ask questions. You don't have to think about where you are, what you're doing, or the difficulties of anything else. Your job is one job, and it is hammered into your head. There's no need to worry about your future, your life outside that job, or anything else. That one calling is yours, and that's comfortable because your world isn't big and scary. You have time settings to everything. Even in the worst days of combat (or on your mission) you can look at your deployment papers and hopefully see an end date, where you can say by THIS date, I'm done. It's just one day at a time and I can make it to that date.

You can drag me through the mud, spit at me, slam doors in my face, laugh at me, humiliate me, make me the most depressed I've been in my entire life, and make me feel like a failure, but I can get through it because I know that there's an end. I know that I can make it through just one more day. You can get shot at, blown up, cut up, torn up, and see the most horific things in the world, but hopefully there is that end date, where you know that at that date, you're coming home and you won't have to deal with it any more. You can do anything for just one more day when you know there's an end.

Those things don't exist in the real world.

There's no structure to real life, and that's where it gets scary. Instead of having a person moving you around, telling you where to be, how to live, and how long to live it, you get nothing. You're left with yourself, and that's scary. When you leave a structured place, be it school, family, military, mission, or whatever else, and you're left out for yourself, there's infinite possibilities, and no longer are there rules for everything because those rules don't apply any more. You can stay out as late as you want, wear whatever you want, do whatever you want, and see whatever you want, and there's no one telling you that you can't. There's nothing there to give you structure, other than yourself, and that's scary.

Trusting yourself is when you get lost, because there's doubt. You're only lost when you doubt yourself, or the structure that got you where you're at. I could be in the middle of Sweden in a town I couldn't pronounce with no idea of how to get home, but I didn't feel lost because I knew what got me there. Military members can be in the middle of a warzone in a teritory that no one has ever really mapped because no one lives there, and they're not lost because they know what got them there. But, if I got lost in the middle of Sweden now, in that same town with those same circumstances I would feel lost because I would doubt myself. How in the world did I get myself there? How am I going to get myself out? Before I trusted in the person and people involved with getting me into that circumstance that I knew they'd get me out, now I'm the only one left.

Now when I get myself lost, I'm the one that has to solve it. I don't have someone to lean up against. When I'm lost with my career and have no clue what to do, there's no rules that I can follow to get an easy out, I have to figure it out on my own and I have no clue what to do so that's really hard to do. When I get lost with how to have a happy marriage, I feel lost because there's no structure. There's no solution. There's no path that I can follow because there's no one that has set up a set of rules for me that I can just follow and know that it works.

I get why people stay in the military as long as possible. I even understand those people that want to relive their missionary, high school, or even college days, because those were the days where they felt in control. Those were the days that they didn't have to worry and felt like they knew what was going on in their life. They weren't lost.

You can't get lost when you don't have to be in charge of everything, and that's why you should get lost.

Go get lost. Get in a situation where no one can help you out of it. Go figure it out on yourself. You got yourself out in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night, now you have to figure out how to get back home. Go get yourself into a scary career, a major relationship, a life that you're not certain of, because that's when you have to grow. When you get lost, you come up with crazy solutions and get creative. When you get lost you push yourself to become better and find a way to make things work. When you get lost you come together with the people that you're lost with, and you create something better.

Feeling like you have no clue what you're doing, that you have no guide in front of you, and no one to help you doesn't make you lost, it makes you a trailblazer, an adventurer, or even a pioneer. That feeling where you're overcome with fear because everything is riding on you to come up with a solution and you're still stumbling around in the dark trying to understand which way is up is a frightening feeling, but it's in those moments that you can really do something great.

I get it. Avoiding feeling lost is a nice feeling. It's comfortable. It makes it so you have stability and never question yourself, but it's not worth it.

Warhammer Rant

I like Warhammer.

I like 40k, and I think I could even learn to love Age of Sigmar.

I like the hobby. I like the interactions you can have with other people. I like everything about it.

The thing I hate? I hate how that no one will play.

I feel like I'm 8 years old again walking around the house asking everyone if they want to play a game with me and no one ever saying that they do. I feel like those days when I was done with homework and wanting to play with a friend or a neighbor or do anything other than sit at home and the only response that I got back was that everyone else was busy, and that no one wanted to be with me.

It's a two person game. All I need is one, just one, other person that would be willing to say, 'you know what? Sure, I'll give it a shot' and then playing with me. That's it. Just one person. I'm not asking for a D&D group. I'm not asking for a sports team. I'm asking for one other person that shares the hobby with me and is able to fairly regularly open up a night of their schedule and say that they want to play the game with me. It's really not that complicated, and yet for some reason I can't make it happen.

There was a commentary a while ago that I watched talking about how that because there was a community or at least a sense of community where a person was they were able to quickly paint and model and get things out because they wanted to play. They wanted to get out there, and they wanted to have fun with their frinds. I'm experencing the exact opposite of that. I want to play. I want to model. I want to paint. I want to make it a good hobby, but no one is out there playing, and I feel like the entry into other groups or circles that are hardcore about this are a little TOO crazy for me. I can't find someone in my circle, in my life position that doesn't have 100 hours a week to work on things, that doesn't smell like week old doritos, to grow with this.

What I would love is to have a friend where we could grow together in this game. Start out with small games, grow up to larger games. Become comfortable with the games and learn all of the nuances. Instead of that, I'm faced with people that have been doing this for years and their only goal is to get things on the table and wreck face. They don't slow down, they don't help me understand anything, and I feel like I'm getting left in the dust. It's a stupid rant, don't mind me. I'll still paint. I just have no clue when the next time it is that I'm going to be able to field anything.

In a side note - if anyone wants to buy me anything for anything, Chaos Demons (anything that's Tzeentch) is what I've got my eyes on for much further down the road. I still have to finish up painting all of my chaos (which is coming along, my maulerfiend is almost finished, then I'll only have a handful of models that I need to work on from there to be done) then I have to try and tackle two full MASSIVE fantasy armies.

I Waited - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/134/we-didnt

This was partially for the blog, partially for something else with work, but I decided that it fit well in both places, so here's a short story called I Waited.

I Waited

I waited on my twelfth birthday, for someone to tell me that I was actually a super hero. I knew that there was something different with me, and I knew that they had to know what it was. I wanted them to tell me just what my super power was going to be now that I was going into puberty, and I couldn’t wait to keep the family secret. I didn’t care about the cake, the ice cream, or anything else that was wrapped in paper and given to me, I was looking forward to my grandma’s traditional birthday card to have something more than $20 in it, so that I could finally be the super hero that I knew I was.

I waited until the last minute of my sixteenth birthday for my family to tell me that I was adopted. I knew that I was. They didn’t have to tell me. I wanted to have them finally admit to the truth. There were never pictures of my mom pregnant before I was around, there were no baby pictures of me until a few weeks old, and despite what everyone said about how I looked like my dad having brown hair and brown eyes wasn’t a family trait, that’s just called looking average. I knew that there was something different about me when my entire family loved music but I could hardly carry a tune. I knew that I was something different because whenever I looked at family pictures I never felt like I looked like everyone else around me, but at the same time there were old yearbooks that I thumbed through that had pictures of people that looked more like my relatives than my actual relatives. I waited for someone to finally admit to the truth about who I was. 

I waited before and after graduation for someone to finally let me in on the family secret. Dad changed his name when he was in college, and he never told anyone why. I knew that once I finished high school that I would finally be old enough in their eyes to be told. I stayed in my bedroom that night, instead of out with my friends, because I was certain that someone was going to come into my room and tell me the secret. 

I waited for someone to tell me which college I should go to. I got accepted to a few different ones, but I didn’t know which one to pick. I knew that my advisor had a favorite, but he never actually told me which one I should go to. My parents were even less helpful and I tried to get them to put in their opinion but they said that it was my choice. I waited past three admission deadlines and was stuck with plan D. 

I waited in college for her to call back. I even had her number. She was going to be the one. She made me feel like no one else ever could. She made me feel like just possibly, somewhere in my bones was the person that could make dreams come true. She made it feel like I could touch the tops of trees and float through clouds, but she said that she would call me, and so I waited. I waited until I heard from one of my roommates that she was engaged to someone else. 

I waited for a response from my interview at my dream job. They were the company I was going to work for. They were the only thing that I wanted to be with for the years that I planned it out. That company was where I was going to be, and I knew that after one interview they would see what I had and call me back. I waited for their response. I only slept three hours a night for a week because I was afraid that if I fell asleep that I would miss their call welcoming me in to their fold, where I knew that I would belong and could finally make a difference in my world. I waited because I knew that if I got that job, I could finally be different. I could finally do all of the things that I had dreamed of doing.

I waited to ask her to marry me; she said it was too little too late. I wanted to make sure that I was ready and that I could support her and we could have a family together. I wanted everyone to be happy, and she didn’t like that I wanted to provide that for her.

I waited to start my family. I couldn’t have a kid while still in a graduate program. Then I couldn’t have a kid while interning. I couldn’t have a kid while in my first year at the company. I certainly couldn’t have a kid while working on the new project. I wanted to be the father that would help and love my kid, and I couldn’t do that while I was just getting started in the world. I waited for her to tell me that we should have a kid, but all she told me was that we weren’t right for each other anymore.

I waited to move. I always wanted to live on the east coast; I liked the cities. There were jobs out there that were better paying, there was a life style that I knew would fit me, but I waited because it was a bit too much work to try to box up everything in my life deciding what pieces could go with me and which had to be thrown away. I knew that I would have been better off in a different city with a different set of friends, but getting there was just too much work, and so I waited. Each week I would tell myself that I would start to clean out a room. That each night I could start to think about cleaning my life up so that I could move, but I waited to start it all because my work days were long and I got tired.

I waited for the will to be read to still hear the words that I knew were to be true. Everyone else was sad to hear that my dad had died, but throughout the funeral I didn’t cry. I didn’t care about his body being put into the ground. I didn’t care that I would never be able to talk to him again, because I knew that the will was going to be read and the truth would finally come out about me. It was the last chance for my dad to tell me what I had always known, that he was not my father. I waited for the lawyer to give away the china cabinet full of nick knacks to my sister. I waited for the house to go to my older brother. I waited as all of the heirlooms and chotskies were given away. I waited while everything else was debated over, because apparently I should have had strong emotional ties to the standup piano and argued over it for an hour with my brother and sister. I waited because I knew that at the end of that will was going to be the lines that I knew to be true, that I was different. That the people arguing about silverware and blenders weren’t my actual blood, and that I was something more. I waited for him to pull me to the side and tell me. I waited for the phone call to come and tell me in secret for a month after the funeral. 

I waited for my bosses to give me a promotion because I knew that I was doing a good job and doing better than everyone else in my office. I knew that I was better than them, and that my manager had to be seeing that. I knew that they would see just how great of an employee I was, and that they would do what had to be done and give me a raise. 

I waited to enter retirement. I still had work to do. I still had things to get done, and no one at my job could do my job. It was my job, and no matter how smart they thought a new hire was going to be, no one could do it faster or quicker than me. I waited to go to finally see the cities I had dreamt about looking at. I waited to be the old guy who could yell at kids to get off his lawn at all hours of the day. I waited to even be that old guy who lived at the library and read books for the entire day because that’s all he had to worry about. I knew that I wanted to do those things, but I also knew that I needed my job and so I waited. 

I waited to see a doctor about a small little lump. It was a birthmark. A doctor wasn’t going to tell me any different. I waited to see one because he wasn’t going to say anything that I didn’t already know. I didn’t care if the lump had grown in size, changed colors, or any of those other worry wort things. It was just a birthmark – a birthmark of stage four skin cancer. 

I waited for someone to come and visit me in the hospital. Someone was going to come. My boss, my neighbor, or anyone other than nurse Tyson was going to come and see me. 

I waited for permission from my body to stop breathing.

Thousand Sons Army - Warhammer

I took these pictures a while ago, but I forgot to put them up here. Here is my thousand son army. The only thing that is missing are two rhinos, but here are my 1,850 points of thousand sons.

There's all of them together. Terminator lord, sorcerer lord, a 5 man unit of warp talons, a 16 man unit of cultists, a 10 man unit of chaos space marines, a 10 man unit of terminators, a 9 man unit of thousand sons, and then the heldrake.

With that said, let's start at the top of the list with my thousand sons terminator lord. Sometimes I swap him over to a terminator sorcerer just to double down on psychic powers, but it depends on how I'm feeling.

 Then comes the sorcerer. I can run him a bunch of different ways. I can say that he's just the thousand sons sorcerer, or, I can say that he's a sorcerer lord. Typically though, he gets jammed in a box with the other nine thousand sons. I have also been known to say the staff is a ranged weapon. Seeing as a lot of those options above don't allow for two melee options, that staff has been a bolter, a combi-bolter, and even the artifact flamethrower where you get to torrent strike with it.

 5 man unit of warp talons. It's pretty simple and straight forward. There's not too many options for them, but now they have glowing eyes, so at least they've got that going for them. 

 16 man unit of cultists. This used to be only 10, but then I put in some extra time and finished up the rest of the group, just in case I wanted to bring more of them. They're typically the last thing I do in my list and they soak up anything extra that couldn't go into other areas. I know that I should give them a bit more credit because they're great bullet eaters, as well as objective secure, but here they are.

10 unit of chaos space marines. This picture is blurry, but if you've been on this blog for any time, you should know what these guys look like. I'll put in a few extra pictures of these guys blended in with the entire team, but they're also typically thrown into a rhino and bused around the table to where I need them.

 10 man unit of terminators. Ahh these guys never let me down, except for every single time that they do. Seriously, I love them, but every time I've put them on the field, they've been cleared off in no time flat, mainly because they take an entire army's fire for a round to wipe them out. The best they've ever done is going from a ten man unit to a three man unit, when they faced up and tanked an entire 2,000 points worth of cannons from Astra Militarum.

 9 man unit of thousand sons. These get thrown into the other rhino with the sorcerer above. They're impossible thousand sons unit (because they have melee weapons and pistols instead of full on bolters) but I like this look tot hem instead of the typical one where there's not much diversity. If the sorcerer above it only the unit sorcerer, the dude with a sword (in the front) just turns into a random thousand son with a big ol' sword. If he's a sorcerer lord, then the dude in the front, turns into the unit's sorcerer (which means in the rhino that they're jammed into that they'll have two sorcerers).

 Heldrake! My thousand sons helldrake. The last piece to this puzzle. Here's all of the pictures that I have of this baleflamer, torent blasting, flying beast of awesome!

There you have it, 1,850 points of chaos space marines. All painted, all based, all up to the quality that I want them to be at, and all ready to wreck face in the name of Tzeentch.

I Don't Sell - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/133/sales

When I worked at ROI, I started out as a translator. That was my job. I was supposed to take what they had and then update it into a different language so that they could do their job. I didn't have to talk to customers (much) and at the very most I only had to do customer support, and never, ever had to sell.

Unfortunately African Mango went the way of the dinosaurs, and fell apart. I was given the option of either getting fired because they no longer needed a Swedish translator, or switch campaigns. I needed money, so I switched campaigns.

I met with my new boss, Brett Wood, and he explained what I needed to do. The only problem? I hated sales. I had no desire in any way shape or form to ever do sales over the phone. I hated telemarketers, I never wanted to be a telemarketer, but I was in a position to telemarket to companies.

For the next few months, I was in sales, and I hated it. It wasn't even hardcore sales, I was doing the first contact for information for actual salesmen to follow up on, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated the product, I hated my job, and I hated sales. As I told Brett a million times, I don't do sales.

As much as I try to make it a mantra that I'm not a salesman, I wish I was.

Part of being a good author is knowing how to sell the book. People that don't know how to write, but know how to sell, they'll get published. Good authors that don't know how to sell their book and make contact with others, they're like me and never publish. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like sells, and I hate even more talking about myself.

That's the worst part about it. If I'm selling or talking about someone else or whatever else, but when it comes down to something that I have done or want to do, I'm a horrible salesman. I get awkward when it comes to talk about myself, and I get nervous.

The most recent example is with Dream Analysis. I had a real opportunity to become "That guy" on facebook, and spam everyone with it. Instead I think I mentioned it one or two times, and even then I didn't even push it that hard. I think I just left a link for one of them and never said a single word about what it was or what was going on. Even this blog, I write it as though I have a huge audience, and honestly I'm sure that if I whored out a bit more, I could get some regular visits, but I don't because I don't like to sell myself. Everything I do runs into that problem. If I just sold a few things a bit better I would have more followers, more readers, and more money, but I don't like it, and I don't know why.

Part of me hates sales because I feel like I'm forcing people into things that they don't actually want. For example with ROI I was pushing Visa cards on companies that didn't need or want them. If people actually wanted to read this blog, they would read it, I shouldn't have to sell it. If people want to read my book, they'll read it, I shouldn't have to push them. But I know that as much as I hate selling myself, I need to do it. It doesn't happen that way. The only way people can ever find me and appreciate me, is to sell myself. The only problem comes that I don't know just how much I'm going to have to sell, and that is when things get icky.

With the mood that I'm in right now, I'm most likely going to back off from this. I'm not a salesman. I know that I should be, but right now I want to get back into the joy of writing. I want to write what I want to write, and not have to worry about the stupidity of selling my books. I've been thinking way too much about how people think about me lately, and that's no good. I'm just going back to thinking about what I want to think about, doing my thing as best as I can, and enjoying life. Focusing too much on stupidity and other people hasn't been making me happy lately. It's time to write and do the things that I want to do.

What To Do Next

For six months I've been working on one project - my thousand sons army.

As you have seen (and will continue to see) I am VERY happy that this is my first army that I've completed, but there's always the next project.

The next projects that I have ready and lined up are as follows -
Make my Thousand Sons army into an apocolypse force. We're talking two demon princes, a second terminator lord, a third rhino, finalize the maulerfiend, a second unit of thousand sons, chosen, raptors, another lord, and then 23 marines. I've got a lot to work with here, and there's enough diversity that I could honestly spend the next few months working on them for a while and be just fine with it. The good side to this is that it gives me more diversity with my army. By adding that much into it that will be painted and ready to go, I could go as large as an apocolypse battle and be happy to field something because I'd be ready to throw a STUPID amount of points at the table. This is most likely the option that I'm going to go with because I should finish what I start. I still have more to work on with this, and I need to finish it.

I also have the option to finally go back to my roots and do some more vampires. I've got a horde of models (literally) just sitting around, and I've got a lot to do with them. I've got units of grave guard, ghouls, dire wolves, black knights, hexwraiths, and all sorts of undead goodness that need some time. The good time to this is the pure numbers of them. With the massive amount of numbers, I've got a massive amount of work, the only down side to this is that finding a game to use them in is near impossible.

Then there's the elves. None of them are painted (or at least none that I'd like to take credit for, there are still those that I painted while in Karlskrona). That reminds me that I should send something to Elder Ringer, and show him the obsession that he's implanted. With the elves, I have a fresh army. I start with nothing and can make them look and be however I want. It's daunting because I have that freedom, but at the same point it's a great thing because I can do whatever I want and that's just down right freeing.

Now I just have to figure out which one I want to do.

In other news, tonight my personal goal happened. There were two things that happened tonight and both of them were exactly what I have always set as a goal for myself. The first was that someone would look at my paint jobs and go 'wow, I want mine to look like that' or something along those lines. It's a low mark, but I wanted someone in the hobby to look at what I did and then be shocked that I've only been really hardcore painting for about six months, that they would look at what I have and want that for their own army. The other thing that happened, I've always wanted someone to look at what I have and then be shocked that I work with junk paint from Walmart. I'm not using expensive paints, or expensive brushes, I'm using things that you can buy for small moneys, not lots and lots of money. Tonight was the night where skill, not a thick wallet, made things look good.

Thousand Sons Heldrake - Warhammer

I'm keeping this one in drafts for a while, but I want a photo log about how I made my heldrake the way I did. Here's all of the steps I took and how I got from blue on blue with more blue, to the final product.

I started it off with a dark blue base, dry brushed a light blue and then ink washed a regular blue. It was just blue on blue on blue for the excuse of saying that I had at least three colors on it. Sure, they were all blue colors, but I had them on there. 

From there I painted in all of the sections that I wanted to do the color blend on the bottom of the heldrake red. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to look, so I played it safe and did the bottom first.

I thought it didn't look too bad, so the top got the red treatment as well.

The tricky part about the color blend was that I was working on a blue base with a red on top of it, meaning that a strong yellow was near impossible. What I did to try to fight this was that before I even tried to start fighting the color blend, I lined in each cell half yellow and half red. This way I could come back and do a few layers of yellow on the yellow (typically by the time I got to the blend it was at least two or three layers) so it was strong enough.

Then came the hideous task of blending every single cell. I didn't worry about going over the lines too much, but I will never ever do this ever again.

Slowly but surely I worked my way through each wing, and remember this is just the underside.

It's slowly progressing, bottom right wings are shaded, others are not.

Once I got an entire side done I went back over it with blue to clean up all of the painting over the lines and to really exaggerate the cells. This one simple thing made each cell pop a lot more than I was expecting and it almost made me question a further step down the path where I do the metals.

Finally both sides of the bottom got done.

With the piece half done with color blends, it was time to tackle the top. The same thing happened. Each cell was first 50/50 red and yellow and then I went in and color blended each one into a red to yellow gradient.

This is the one where I really realized just how much the blue lines made a difference. You can see that the top picture isn't bad, but as soon as each cell gets outlined in the second picture, things look significantly better.

 That got me to this point. The only thing I needed to tackle was the face, with some REALLY small cells, so I went out, got a new detail brush and tackled those.

 After that it was time for the silver to come in. Top, bottom, everywhere I could get it that made sense to me. Officially it was supposed to be a light blue silver color, but I could never see the blue in the silver.

 To get a blue tone to the silver I washed it in a blue wash/glaze, I don't know, just regular paint watered down a whole bunch. You can see it in the next pictures. In the first picture there's only the blue wash on the top wing, and then in the second one you can see just what that blue wash does to everything else. It finally gets that hint that the silver isn't silver, but some sort of blue metal.

 With that done I did some edge highlights, and then based it.

 And here's my happy little Thousand Sons Heldrake with the rest of his army.

The best part about all of this, the ROUGH math behind all of this is that I started late November painting the marines, and have slowly been working through this army to now (which is the start of June). I do have two rhinos, that are just blue boxes (exact same paint job as the heldrake before any of this started), but I now have a fully painted, 40k Thousand Sons army. They are all the same color scheme, all of them are based, and all of them were done by me. In 6 months, I have made my 1850 points of an army, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say they look pretty good.

And now that I have this rediculously sexy army. . . it's time to sleep.