Trying to do this on my phone

I'm trying to do this on my phone today, we'll see how well or works.

Yesterday I was watching Mr. Rodgers with Addie, and wow does that man know how to hit you at home through some simple words. It might be old, and its production value is really bad, but his words are those that are powerful. We were watching the infamous crayon factory episode, but at the end he talks about imagination versus really doing something. This episode that was easily as old as me, if not older, was a smack in the face to me about writing. Ever since I finished DA, I've been lazy with writing and oddly enough it was Mr. Rodgers that snacked me across the head and said that I need to stop dreaming and actually do something.

That man is good at what he does.

My Radio - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/100/radio

Sorry for the delay on writing these, it wasn't until I started to really look at these that I realized that I hadn't written one of them for a while. I'll try to keep up because I finally realized how to make it possible on my phone. Either way, here's episode 100 of This American Life, and what I would add to it. 

When I was growing up, I didn't buy my own music until I was 17. . . or maybe even 18. It wasn't until Kazza that I really started to pick up my own music taste, but for the most part, I had my radio.

Every night (for a lot of nights, for a really long time, and to a point I still do it now days), I fell asleep listening to my radio in headphones. This first started with a tiny little hand held 9 volt Ghost Busters radio where I would occasionally filter my way through the AM stations, up to my first stereo, to the one that I now claim as mine, but was my dad's first. Even to this day I enjoy putting on a stream on Twitch, or listening to some sort of radio before I go to sleep. It's like listening to a person telling a story and finally having that allowance to fall asleep while they tell you that story. It's the ability of being able to get a story read to you to go to sleep to, and it is awesome.

While growing up, my radio wasn't only my step in bed time story reader, but also the thing that I listened to for the majority of an entire day once a week. My family was good Mormons, and so on Sundays we were trying to keep the Sabbath day holy, which meant no TV, no friends, not much of anything, so I would listen to NPR the ENTIRE day. I would wake up and listen to Sunday's Morning Edition, and it would keep going late into the night. Depending on the day I would even keep it running through the late night jazz and into the BBC broadcasts that start super late at night. Throughout my entire Sunday I would listen to Car Talk, The Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, and all of the other shows that would come through the NPR back at home. It was because of those days that I am writing this. The reason that I'm okay enough to write 100 episodes of My American Life, is because for a long time, these were the episodes that I listened to on Sundays.

These episodes weren't just me trying to keep the air filled with something more than The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, they were a way for me to see the world outside of my teenage home. The thing about the radio, or at least the radio that I listened to for all of that time, was that the radio was voices of a world that I wanted to be part of. It was educated, it was interesting, it looked at the world in a way that I never even thought was possible. That's the thing about these radio shows, is that for the most part you had your news stories in some of them, a bit of political in others, but then there were programs like This American Life, and Prairie Home Companions and it wasn't just news, it was stories. It was the art of story telling.

The radio, when it was airing those shows, wasn't just airing something that I would forget about in the next week, it was a story that I wanted to listen to, and I"m a sucker for a good story. I like stories. I like getting wrapped up into a story about something that gets me out of my life, because let's admit the facts right now, life sucks. Life is never where you want to be, you always want to be somewhere else, worrying about something else, and not having to deal with your own problems, and story radio (not news radio, because that's just angry people yelling at each other) was my place to get those stories and to see a world outside of constantly being grounded, and also the start of my brain thinking that I possibly had something that I could write about as well.

That was the other thing that the radio was for me, it was my entertainment.

As a teenager, I was often in trouble. Let me correct that, I was always in trouble. I didn't like being bossed around, I thought I was smarter than everyone, and I just didn't like it, which meant that more often than not I was in trouble. Being in trouble meant I wasn't allowed to watch the TV, I wasn't allowed to play on the computer, and there was no way that I"d be able to visit my friends, so I had a few things to keep me entertained, books and my stereo. To this day, that's what keeps me entertained, books (or at least stories of some sort or another) and my stereo. My stereo has been upgraded to my laptop with podcasts and internet radio, but the combo is the same. Because I was constantly in trouble, I didn't go out and do things because I was stuck at home listening to my radio. Radio wasn't just a place to listen to the top 40, it was a place for me to go instead of my friend's house because I couldn't. Radio, to me, was, and is, something of importance, and a great form of entertainment because you don't get stuff like this anywhere else.

Radio is one of the weirdest things, because it's nothing but sound. You never know who a person actually is, you only have their voice to work off of. From that one voice, from their inflections, their speed, their pace, and the vocabulary they use, you start to make an image of who you think they are. I have listened to This American Life for years now, and I still can not tell you what the host looks like. I can spot his voice from a mile away and can tell you exactly who he is if I hear him, but I couldn't pick him out of a crowd if there was a gun to my head. That's the weirdest part of the radio medium, it's personal to the point where I feel like I know these people. I feel like I know Ira, his family, his pets, his likes and dislikes, but at the same point I know nothing about him.

Radio, is also the home of creative non-fiction. The personal essay, the profile piece, the best writing that I love to read now all comes from the radio.

I've tried to fix up this post and really try to understand what it is about the radio that I love so much, but for as old as it is, and as weird as it seems, I'm going to be listening to radio stories until the day I die, because it is the chance of getting to be able to listen to a story instead of having to read it, and that is an amazing thing.

Finished Mannfred's Mount

I finished the mount for Mannfred Von Carstien today.

It looks pretty awesome, but unfortunately for some stupid reason my phone is not sending the pictures to my mail, so as soon as I get that updated and uploaded expect some finished product pictures. Now I just have to actually paint Mannfred.

Here they come!

There we go. The bad news is that I tried to prime Mannfred, and I botched it up. I did too much, and it was sprinkling outside, so it got a few raindrops on it, and then I primed too much in certain places so it got a little muddled. Needless to say, I had to find a way to strip the primer and it's now sitting in a stripper, and hopefully by tonight I'll have a fresh Mannfred to work on and try not to mess up again. Either way, I just got done with the majority of the paint, so I can't complain. Now I just have to finish up Mannfred, and then . . . and then I get to do the impossible that I've never done before and figure out what in the world I'm going to do with that base.

Legos For The Digital Age - The Games I've Played

Yup, Minecraft.

I finally got around to playing it, and I TOTALLY get the hype now. It's a nice flow of a game where you can build just about whatever you want, dig to wherever you want, and you find yourself going, "I'll just do one more thing. . ." enough times in a row that you find yourself with a two story mansion lit by lava falls, a herd of cattle, and a pet dog and it's three in the morning and you're trying to convince yourself that you can do just 'one more thing'.

For a game that has no real game, I get the addiction to it.

The thing about this game is that you get lost doing things. While you're doing one thing, thirty other things start to crop up that you also want to do. You start to work on digging out diamonds but then you find a lava tube that opens up to a huge cave that leads into a bigger deposit of minerals that you have to explore. About two hours later you're finally back to where you started trying to dig out some more diamonds.

There is the MINOR and it is a truly minor thing, that the maps are somewhat restrictive. The maps on the ps3 version are small. They are small enough that once I knew where I was going, I could navigate from any corner of my world back to my base in one day cycle avoiding any darkness and monster spawns. Although they are small, you get that small little thing where you have BILLIONS, if not trillions, of maps to play on. Sure, you might know one map like the back of your hand, but just start another random map and hold on because it's going to be a different world. It's a bit frustrating when one map doesn't have what you need (like an end portal) but there's enough maps out there that you can find a variety of things no matter what you want to do.

Then there is creative mode. I'm starting to see where people just sit down and build replicas of buildings, or massive towns, and how you can start doing that. You start with a small little shed, that you call home, and in no time flat you're transforming the land, strip mining entire mountains, and morphing the world into what you want/need. I had to walk away from this game before I hit 100% on the trophies for this very reason. I knew that if I kept playing I would just start going full lego mode and building cathedrals with stained glass windows and other stupid things. I could dump some serious hours into this digital form of legos and not even blink an eye.

Yes, the graphics are horrible.
Yes, there is NO plot line.
But oh, is there still a game in the pixilated square world that is Minecraft. If you have ever spent any time with legos and actually enjoyed it you will love Minecraft for the exact same "I can build anything and destroy anything" feeling.

Highlights

It took me a while to figure out what color and the line size of the highlights, but they're starting to come in. I'm going to have to go back and 'erase' with some black paint some of the thicker lines, but it's starting to come in.

I did try a BTP approach to the ribs and claws and tried to dry brush it. And I get it, if you're in a rush and you don't want to spend the time, dry brushing is fast easy and covers a lot of details in a low amount of time, but holy balls is it easy to tell that you're rushing. I tried doing it, and I'm sure that if I was really lazy and hadn't spent a HUGE amount of money and time on this thing already, that I'd be okay with it, but I want some high quality work, and dry brushing wasn't the look that I was aiming for, so I'm sticking to the line highlights, even if it takes me a million hours. Or rather, especially because it takes me a million hours.

Classes

I went to my new job today to look at my classes, and I've got some real winners.

The first spot is pretty normal of a classroom. Nothing too weird, desks, white board, all of that normal classroom stuff that you'd expect. . . except that just like the other classes that I'm teaching in is on the other side of the world. I'm not even exaggerating about this, the class is two doors away from the northern most exit to the ENTIRE CAMPUS. There isn't a door any higher than the door that I'm teaching next to. Not to mention that it's just down the hall from the costume department for the drama department, and also the cabinet making classroom.

Then comes my next room. It's one floor down, a bit closer to the rest of the university, and it looks normal. . . except for the back wall of the room which is lined in windows, leading to a lab full of materials that you would need to be an evil villain in a 50's B science fiction movie.

Finally is my final room in a building even closer to the actual rest of campus, and it's pretty awesome because it comes with its own engine . . . and transmission. Apparently I'm sharing the room with the auto-mechanics, and they have engine and transmission displays just sitting in the class, ready for me to use in my English lessons.

My One Rule

When I'm writing, I have always had one rule - I'm only allowed to work on one thing at a time. I know who I am, and I know that I will easily start twenty different things and be exactly like my grandma and have a houseful of started or half finished projects and nothing that is actually finished.

My family is the stars of half finished projects, or starting a project with only the 'best of intentions' or whatever else you want to say. We're the ones that see amazing things, love it, and then do it for a while until we see another thing. This is part of the reason that I have my platinum rule with games. I'm going to stick to one game at a time because I know that if I allow myself I will play everything in my bookshelf for two minutes and never play more than that.

There's a bit of reasoning behind what I'm doing, but it basically boils down to me following Sarah Kay's understanding of writing, and that writing helps her work through things. Writing hasn't helped me through something for a while, and there's something that I want to write through, so it's going to happen.

That is why I'm going to break my rule. I'm going to have my story that I'm writing for.

Edit - it has only been really one night worth of writing on it, and I'm starting to figure things out. Even if it has been line edits, I most likely won't be writing on it for much longer. I'm starting to sort things out. It's totally true that writing helps me think through things. 

Timing

This is when things get a little spooky.

ROI has always been a perfect fit for what I needed it to be. As horrible as that company was ran, it always met exactly what I needed it to be.

When I first got the job I was the Swedish translator, but at the same time I got the job I was also moving to Pleasant Grove, with no car, and no cash to even think about getting a car. It just happened to turn out that ROI was down the street from where I had just moved to, and I didn't need a car.

When my masters degree really started to kick up a notch and I needed extra time at work to maybe spend a bit of time on my homework, my campaign started to slow down and I had dead time to work on things.

When Addison was born, I just happened to be moved into a campaign that was ran by a person who was flexible with his hours, but treated the job in a way that I wanted to stay.

When I got my position at LDSBC, the company just happened to start go down hill even more than before, making me want to bail, and also made it easier for me to start thinking about leaving and getting an alternate job.

Then comes the kicker to all of this when I got fired/quit.

Officially this is how it went down - the boss told me to meet with him on Friday around noon, I went down, got fired. There were more details here, and there's more information that I don't want to get into, but either way, I knew that from everything that I had ever done with ROI previously, it was going to work out because ROI has ALWAYS fit the role that I needed them to fit. 

The funny part about this, the part that is nice and spooky, is that about a half hour before I was fired, I got accepted to teach at UVU. As soon as I didn't need to be there any more, ROI got rid of me. As soon as there was literally nothing else that the company could do for me, it spit me out within a half hour.

Call it coincidence, call it an act of God, or call it whatever you want, there's just too many times that my life made a move and at almost the exact same time ROI managed to move to fit into that new world that I lived in. It's a little spooky.

422 Posts with ROI

As of Friday (it's Sunday now and I'm just realizing this), this blog is going to have to change names or do something else. My boring job, the one that I hated, the one that allowed me to sit around and do nothing, but bug me about doing nothing, fired me. The job that started this blog is finally gone.

It was a fun run while it lasted, and I did a LOT of writing while at ROI so I can't complain. They were flexible with my schedule and that's all I wanted from them. The management was horrible, the co-workers are crazy, and I saw more people revolve through that company than I care to mention due to the lowest hiring standards that I could imagine, but at least they helped me through my masters program, my daughter being born, and the start of my career. I don't agree with the company and how they ran it, but they sure were helpful to getting me where I am today.

I'm still going to write here, and it might not always be at work, but it is going to be when I'm bored, or when I have something to say, so don't expect this to disappear. However, with that in mind, I'm going to finally share it with people. It's been long enough that it's sat in hiding, I might as well show some of the stuff that I created while at work bored out of my mind.

My co-workers were trying to act like it was a sad thing, but honestly I'm happy I'm out of there. I don't need them any more. I have my professional career starting, my life is growing, and I'm no longer in the place where I need a flexible part/full time job at a call center. It sucks saying goodbye, but honestly, it's nice to see it in my rear window.

I wonder what happens when I email attachements

Core (599 / 500 = 29.95%)

Zombies x 35	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Zombie	4	1	0	3	3	1	1	1	2	-	-	In	115
Wargear: Hand Weapon. Upgrades: Musician; Standard Bearer. Special: Always Strikes Last; The Newly Dead; Undead.

Zombies x 30	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Zombie	4	1	0	3	3	1	1	1	2	-	-	In	100
Wargear: Hand Weapon. Upgrades: Musician; Standard Bearer. Special: Always Strikes Last; The Newly Dead; Undead.

Crypt Ghouls x 30	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Crypt Ghoul	4	3	0	3	4	1	3	2	5	-	-	In	310
Wargear: Hand Weapon. Upgrades: Crypt Ghast. Special: Poisoned Attacks; Undead.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Crypt Ghast	4	3	0	3	4	1	3	3	5	-	-	-	-

Dire Wolves x 8	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Dire Wolf	9	3	0	3	3	1	3	1	3	-	-	WB	74
Wargear: Hand Weapon. Upgrades: Doom Wolf. Special: Slavering Charge; Undead; Vanguard; Swiftstride.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Doom Wolf	9	3	0	3	3	1	3	2	3	-	-	-	-

Special (557 / 1,000 = 27.85%)

Hexwraiths x 10

M

WS

BS

S

T

W

I

A

Ld

ASv

WSv

Type

Pts

Hexwraith

6

3

0

3

3

1

2

1

5

6+

-

Ca

310

Wargear: Great Weapon. Upgrades: Hellwraith. Special: Ethereal; Fast Cavalry; Soul Reapers; Soulstriders; Spectral Hunters; Terror; Undead; Swiftstride.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Skeletal Steed	8	2	0	3	3	1	2	1	3	-	-	-	-
Special: Spectral Steeds; Undead.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Hellwraith	6	3	0	3	3	1	2	2	5	-	-	-	-

Black Knights x 8

M

WS

BS

S

T

W

I

A

Ld

ASv

WSv

Type

Pts

Black Knight

4

3

0

4

4

1

3

1

6

2+

-

Ca

247

Wargear: Hand Weapon; Heavy Armour; Shield. Upgrades: Hell Knight; Musician; Standard Bearer; Barded Skeletal Steeds; The Screaming Banner. Special: Killing Blow; Spectral Steeds; Undead; Swiftstride.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Skeletal Steed	8	2	0	3	3	1	2	1	3	-	-	-	-
Special: Spectral Steeds; Undead.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Hell Knight	4	3	0	4	4	1	3	2	6	-	-	-	-

Rare (195 / 500 = 9.75%)

Black Coach

M

WS

BS

S

T

W

I

A

Ld

ASv

WSv

Type

Pts

Black Coach

-

-

-

5

6

4

-

-

-

3+

4+

Ch

195

Special: Evocation of Death; Terror; Undead; Vampiric; Swiftstride.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Cairn Wraith	-	3	0	3	-	-	2	3	5	-	-	-	-
Wargear: Great Weapon. Special: Chill Grasp.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	ASv	WSv	Type	Pts
Nightmare	8	3	0	4	4	1	2	1	3	-	-	-	-
Special: Undead.

Magic Items

The Screaming Banner

Enemy units taking a Fear test whilst in combat with the unit carrying this banner must roll one extra dice for the test and discard the one with the lowest result.

Total Points: 1,351 / 2,000

As we all know I can email to post on the blog. I just want to see if attachments work as well. Either way, here's an attachment of my army. You'll notice that it's missing a LOT of points, because there's 650 points that are signed over to Mannfred, making this army a total of 2,001 points. It's over by one point, but hopefully that isn't a huge deal breaker for anyone.

First Fight

Well that went about as expected.


I finally had my first Warhammer fight in years and I got wiped off the table.

Things that I learned - the Krell/Kemmler duo is okay, but they aren't amazing. If you can run them against a swarm army, or even a normal infantry unit, then they might be able to do some damage, but they're not all around that great. There's a lot of empty points with them, and even with the forgotten rules that I occasionally forgot about, they're not as strong as I was giving them credit for.

Black coach is not as squishy as I originally thought. It's got a mean punch to it. Point it towards the right units, and it should be able to pack a serious punch.

Wolves aren't as bad as I thought, but they get wiped really fast.

Skeletons are okay, but need a ton of them. It'd be better to tar pit with something other than skellies and then hit them with something stronger than them as well. They might have their points, but it sure isn't how I was using them.

Strategy is something that I really do not know or have a firm grasp on. I've got to actually walk into the fight with more of an idea of what I'm going to do, instead of just plopping things down and hoping for the best.

Finally - Mannfred (the guy I've been working on) is the best paint job there by a very, VERY long shot. Seriously, I was trying to be nice when I saw some of the other jobs, but wow. At least I know that I managed to do that one right. Now to just get the rest of the army up to snuff.

40 Hours

40 Hours.

Come on people, snipe the ebay bid so that I don't have to pay for it. I've got 40 hours until I have to fork up the cash (or rather the credit because the cash isn't there).

I Enjoy Being A Boy . . . Sort Of - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/99/i-enjoy-being-a-girl-sort-of

This is a tricky one because of my degree. I specialized in my undergraduate (and even in my graduate degree) when given the chance for using a literary lens, I'd go with feminism, but more along the line of gender studies, where I would look for both gender stereotypes and social influence in understanding gender for both men and women. I'm going to try to limit this one down to ramblings and rantings of a male feminist. Yes, we do exist, there are dozens of us!

Feminism isn't limited to just women, guys can do it too. If you want equality between the genders, if you want the freedom to do what you want to do no matter if your genitals are interior or exterior genitals, then you're a feminist. Just because you might fall into this category, it does not make you the crazy 'man hater' feminist. You can still be a feminist and not want to overthrow men, burn your bra, and yell at any man who looks at you like he might like you. You can totally be a feminist and look at not only how Barbies are making girls look at themselves, but also at the GI-Joes, and super heroes that give horrible body image issues to boys as well. But enough about being a feminist, onto enjoying being a boy. . . sort of.

All together, being a boy sort of sucks, but at least we don't have to deal with menstruation or child birth, so at least we have that for going for us. Where women have the politics and strength behind them to do whatever they want, to be the women that they want to be and have people love them for doing it, men don't quite have that same freedom. Where women get scholarships just for their gender, are praised for being in STEM fields, or doing anything that isn't your 1950's understanding of a woman, guys . . . not so much.

We're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be valiant. We're supposed to do everything that 1950's American men were doing in the 50's. Try being a stay at home dad, it's weird. When a woman enters the work force, she is hailed as a great addition to society. A guy stays with their kid and tries to help raise them, and they are doing nothing more than being lazy and leeching off of the economy. Girls bringing their kid to the pool during the middle of the work day - perfect. They have people to talk to, they can be with one another, and they are there to support each other. A guy shows up and there is not a single other adult with their kid anywhere to be seen.

We're supposed to be the money winners.
We're supposed to be violent.
We're supposed to be noble knights in shining armor.
We're supposed to be organizers and politicians.
We're supposed to be inventors.
We're supposed to be the 'handy man'.
We're supposed to be the community leader.
We're supposed to do so much, and it leaves almost no time to do anything else, even if you hate what is headed in your direction.

Being a guy sucks.

Sure, if you like those roles, and if you like those things, that's great for you, but for those of us that aren't dead lifting bears out of pits that we dug ourselves, re-building our car's engine just for the fun of it, or yelling at the TV screen during football season about a bad call, it sort of sucks because there's no place that really fits us.

The weirdest part about it, is that guys can get away with that "girly" stuff . . . but only if they act more like girls. Gay guys can get away with doing whatever they want. They don't have to be the man's man. This is one of the trickiest parts about everything because I say things like I'm the main cook at my house and I like baking, and it's weird, but as soon as I change my sexual orientation if I was a gay guy who liked to cook and bake there'd be no problem with it at all because apparently liking to cook and bake no matter your gender means that you also have to like guys.

I like being who I am, not having to deal with anything as complicated and icky as the menstruation cycle is a gold star in my mind, but at the same time, it certainly isn't everything it's cracked up to be. 

This Changes Everything!

I have been taking the train every morning for the past two semesters. Every morning I read books, take naps, or even write a bit on my computer. Today, I got bored so I checked the wi-fi hotspots that were avaliable to the train. I was expecting to see a variety of random hotspots that were personal ones ran by people's cell phones and other things like that. I was expecting weird ones like, "Semper wi-fi" for my USMC friends and other things like that.

IT TURNS OUT THAT THERE'S FREE WIFI ON THE TRAIN!

This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. There is wi-fi on the train to and from work.

I don't know what I'm going to do with that information because I know that I should do work and grade papers during the train. . . or I could do what I always do and just take a nap.

I like naps.

How Did I Do That?

I lost Alpha to Omega.

Or at least the digital copy of it. It's not in my documents, it's not in my drive.

Somehow I lost one of the longest stories I've ever written, and I don't know where it went. This is slightly frustrating. I was just trying to locate the instruments so I could finally give them a shot in the D&D campaign, but I couldn't find the story.

This is frustrating.

Once I find that massively over-sized mess of a story I'll throw it in google drive and share it here just so I never have to loose it ever again.

EDIT:
I found them on an external. Wow, is that some bad writing. I'm going to put it onto google drive as soon as I get to my other work and then share it here, but wow, I used to think I was good, but that is some bad writing.

Why did I ever think that I could be an author?

Pre-writing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VAMwCVoDKqACn-EFCLtG6eSRstlIo--DCkLo1PtWMiM/edit?usp=sharing
The massive story that is horribly written and not even spell checked
 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B8hLSAIsDOnPq8Nv3iAURwvTUrlkK9B4oWhNMr3kvAM/edit?usp=sharing

They're not pretty, but it'll do its job so I never loose those ever again.

Snipe

Ebay is a horrible thing.

It's a wonderfully horrible thing.

I saw a REALLY good deal on Eby, and instead of thinking, "you know what, maybe I don't need another 7+ boxes worth of Warhammer stuff, because I just bought that massive group in that road trip to Idaho" I said to myself, "Wow! That's a great deal! BID!"

Now I'm set up to spend $100 that I'm not sure I can spend on Ebay on something that I don't need, and I'm praying for someone to outbid me.

This is when it gets really bad. I think that there's a way for me to opt out of my bid. To do a take back on it so I don't get stuck with the items, but instead of trying to go down that road, even while I write this I'm sitting here going, "But if I was to buy everything in this lot at the store, it'd cost me at least three to four times that retail!" so I refuse to go back and change my bid. I know that I should take it back and I know that it's something that I should not be doing, but I keep rationalizing it away. Alicia has done shopping trips for clothes that are more expensive than this. The trip to the grocery store that I just did today for "a few things" was almost this expensive. I can afford $100, and it's a REALLY GOOD DEAL!

I'm a mess.

I'm starting to see how people can have thousands of thousands of points worth of models and only have them assembled and no where close to being painted. It's starting to become clear. Now I'm just hoping that someone out there in internet land sees that it is a good deal and outbids me in the next five days.

It's five days, someone has to outbid me.

Right?

Stupid, amazing, Ebay.

I have never fought - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/98/throwing-the-first-punch

I am a 29 year old man, and I have never been in a fist fight. Saying something like that is almost akin to saying that you're a 29 year old virgin. Guys fight, they wrestle, they get upset at each other and violence starts, and yet I've managed to avoid it my entire life. I've learned to talk things out, or to attack with my words. You can spar with people verbally or via text, and fighting is a 'solution' that creates no actual solutions. Violence doesn't actually solve any problems, it only causes more, and I've been able to see that in the lives of people around me. I'm 29 years old and never been in a fight.

I still want to get in a fight.

Even though I know it's stupid, even though I know that there's nothing in it that is redeeming or validating for either person inside the fight, and even though I know that it can do some serious damage to both your mental and physical well-being - I still want to get into a fight, but much like learning how to work out at the gym, I feel like because I never learned when I was a kid the most basic elements of doing it, that I'll do it entirely wrong and end up hurting myself far more than if I knew what was 'proper' in how to throw a punch.

I don't know how to throw a punch, I don't know how to take a punch. I don't know what is and isn't okay to do in a fight. I don't know if it's okay to kick people in the balls, pull hair, or just do whatever I want. I don't know the first thing about fighting. I am completely clueless when it comes to fighting.

My exposure and understanding of fighting starts and ends with knowing that if I somehow am able to go backwards down and forward followed by a 'strong punch' I can, and should, if my timing is right, be able to throw a fire ball. 

I don't watch boxing, I have never watched a full round of MMA, and any other martial art or anything else that could be considered fighting. I've never even done a Billy Blanks Tae Bo workout.

I'm not even restricted to boxing or MMA, I would love to do something even something as physical and physical/violent as wrestling. Again, I have about the exposure of nothing when it comes to wrestling but there is part of me that would love to do it.

The thing that is crazy about it is that I don't know why. I don't know why I want to get in a fight. I don't know why I want to get hit or hit someone, or even just wrestle someone down to the ground (or be wrestled down) but it's something that I want to do.

I think that part of it is the idea of being in control of it. It's physical. It's you trying as hard as you possibly can to do one thing. You try as hard as you can to do one thing, and it's a yes or a no into if your best is better than someone else. It's an easy way to rank yourself up against another person. With fighting, you get a clear answer. One person is a winner, one person is a looser, and it depends on something as simple as physical skill. Where my life is full of grey areas where I fill like I'm constantly fighting, but can't seem to get a clear cut 'win' or 'lost' out of a single event, it'd be nice to get a solid answer. It'd be nice to know for sure, where do I rank up in real life.

Then there's also the knowledge of hurting people. The idea of boxing is to knock a person unconscious. To hurt them as much as possible so their body can no longer want to function. I have never broken a bone. I have never gotten a black eye. I have never been knocked unconscious by anything. It's a weird thing, but I want to experience both sides of it. I want to know what it feels like (pain and all) of getting a black eye. I want to know how it feels to break my nose, and also how it feels when my fist connects into another guy's nose and feel it shatter, move, and break under my knuckles. I want to feel how it feels to try as hard as I can, be physically spent, and be unable to fight back. I want to be able to feel how it is to pin someone down, besting them in something physical. I don't know what it is about those feelings, but a weird little part of my brain wants to know what it is like.

I'm 29 years old and have never been in a physical fight of any type and one of the things I want to do the most is to get in a fight even though I know that it's a horrible idea.

Part of the Group - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/97/death-to-wacky

I have a weird set of hobbies and what I enjoy doing. 

The real question is trying to understand what is wacky, and where I lie on that spectrum. The tricky part about being wacky, is that when you're on the inside, when you're part of your wacky group, you're not the wacky one, you're just part of the crowd.

I glowstick, I juggle, I do all sorts of weird, wacky, interesting, crazy things. The only problem with it, is that no matter what is going on, no matter where I stand, as long as I'm in the group of people that I'm with that are part of the community of wackiness, you don't see it, and that's where I'm at.

I'm only partially aware that what I do is wacky, and that's never a good sign. It's sort of like a crazy person realizing, after being institutionalized for a decade or two, that something about them isn't quite right. They only see the tip of the iceberg and they can even see that something isn't normal, but to everyone else they're the craziest person that they know who is hopped up on meds all the time. Knowing that you're wacky, and that there's something different about you isn't a good thing, because chances are if you're just starting to realize that what you're doing is weird and wacky, everyone else has already been in on that information for a long time and they have just kept the secret to themselves.

The tricky part as I'm starting to figure out my quirks and eccentricities, is trying to see if they're 'normal'. Is it normal to stay up late at night doing nothing more than writing about fake people and places? Is it normal to stay up just as late setting up a D&D campaign? Is it weird or wacky to run late nights painting small miniature armies. . . that you'll most likely never actually use in a real game? Where do you draw the line?

For those who are outside the spectrum of wacky, you can easily answer the questions. Of course you're weird if you spend 12 hours a day swimming. Of course you're wacky if you make jokes about how ATB is lacking ATP in most of their music. It's evident if you're outside of the groups of what is wacky, and what isn't, but once you're on the inside and surrounded by the people that love the same things that you love, that think the same way you think, things that were once wacky and weird, turn into things that are fun and exciting.

To everyone else, coming up with new aura spells and attributes for a D&D character that has been customized and stolen from a MOBA just for the off chance that my PC's run into him and are able to use the ability is wacky. For people in my D&D group, it's interesting and they like it .To people outside of the group, sitting up late at night staring at a screen and consistently typing because you just can't stop writing about a character because it's almost like trying to put down a good book and you keep telling yourself 'just one more page before I sleep' is weird. To writers, that's a Thursday.

The weirdest part about self identifying wacky is that when you're in groups you see what is normal. Even in wacky groups there is the 'normal' wacky, and then there's those people off to the side that are wacky, even by the wacky group's standards. You might enjoy juggling, but there's always that one person in the group that insists on juggling an audience member's shoe, a bowling ball, and a bowler hat at the same time. You might enjoy (insert hobby, wacky idea, or anything else here) but there's always that one person that goes one step further into the realm of wacky and it doesn't fit.

Fire spinning was the key for this in my life. Before I spun fire, I always said, "Only crazy people spin fire." It was a mantra. I said it all the time when people asked me if I had spun fire. No, of course I didn't spin fire, only weird, wacky, hippy people spin fire. I could never spin fire. That's not my crowd, that isn't normal, that isn't for me. But then I spun fire. I spun fire, and then spinning fire went from something weird and wacky to something totally normal, but the really crazy people were ones that tried to do wraps with open flames, or breathed fire, or even those people that were stupid enough to try to play with fire without proper precautions. No matter how deep I got into the group of fire performance, no matter where I was in it, there were always people that were/are wackier and crazier, so that means that I wasn't wacky.

I'm not wacky for doing miniture wargaming, because I don't air-brush, I don't play the game as hard as others, and I don't spend THAT much money on it. I don't have multiple armies that are unpainted, I only have one unpainted army. (A month ago, it was only weird, wacky people that had unpainted, unassembled armies just sitting around, that had multiple projects going at the same time, but then I got Mannfred and Nagash at the same time. . . then I invested in the army in Idaho, and that became normal and people that have multiple armies are the weird, wacky ones)

I'm not wacky for playing video games. At least I'm not one of those people that spend (insert number higher than what I play on a weekly basis) hours a week playing video games. As long as that number is higher than mine, it doesn't matter. For example, World of Warcraft players are wacky. They spend WAY too much time and effort on it. I would never do that on WoW. . . even though I did that on RO, but that's different. Totally different because on RO that was normal. I wasn't wacky. On RO, the wacky people were those that had MVP timers and woke up in the middle of the night to try to get a .03% chance of a monster drop from a boss that spawned every four to six hours.

When you're on the inside, wacky is anyone that is 'worse' than you, the really tricky thing is trying to see just where you have wacky in your own life because you have to figure out what is 'normal'. If you don't have what's 'normal' you can't figure out if you're wacky, or rather, just how wacky you might be. Let's be honest, we'll never know how wacky we are in our own lives, because no one is normal. No one is free from at least a little bit of wacky.

Those Crazy Mormons - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/96/pinned-by-history

It's always the crazy ones.

I hate the media some days. As much as I enjoy the church, and enjoy what there is out there about us, I hate how it always shows up being the outlandish ones, or crazies out there, that are sometimes the loudest 'voices' to being Mormon.

The first guy is a noted con man. Everything he did prior to being baptized is bad. His life is in shambles, and then he talks about being baptized and trying to right the wrongs that had happened, and yet he's still swearing, being crazy, and trying to deceive people. As much as he tries to say that he's Mormon and a member of the church, he still manages to get himself thrown into prison and associated with the communism, lying, McCarthyism, and all sorts of chaos.

Just once, I would like the fact that a person is a member of the church come up as a side thought. Just like when you talk about other people of other religions, that you talk about the person first, and their religion second, I would really like that to happen more often. More often than not, the main press that we get is because the crazies are the loudest. The people that are on the fringe, that aren't even full privilaged, active members of the church, always seem to be the loudest. Luckily things have been changing recently, but really, it frustrates me that being a member only gets brought up when people are doing crazy things.

Be a member while doing normal things - it never gets brought up.
Even if you're doing beyond average things - it never gets brought up.
It's not until you're doing something bonkers, and the media wants to just show how crazy that one thing is, that they bring up that you're a member of the church. It's not until a person starts being really outlandish, and saying crazy things like they are the founder of long list of firsts, without any evidence, and sounding like they should be wearing a tin-foil hat, that the media brings up that they are also a Mormon. A person living their life effecting others for the better while raising a family with three kids and a dog in the suburbs - not a single mention of their religion. A person who built their own house in the middle of no where, avoiding society, trying to pay penance for errors they had made earlier in their life - instantly we are told that they're a member because that is just one more step on the crazy train to show how bonkers they are.

I know that I should be focusing on trying to capture the idea of being stuck in a historical moment and being in the middle of it, but I don't know anything about that. I've never been in the middle of some grand historical event, and even if I have (or am) I certainly don't know it right now, so I'm picking out this rant from my life. Because of that lack of real connection to the topic, I'm going to try to push out the next subject (hopefully on topic) as fast as possible.

Mannfred Von Carstein

I lied, it's not him. It's his mount.

This is where I'm at right now with working on Manny, and he's looking pretty good. The chest armor is obviously missing a lot of details, and there's two different skull colors right now in the body (they're hopefully going to all get updated to the lighter color of ivory tonight with that weird orange/brown color hiding behind it and poking out in some places.

They're not the best pictures, but this is what a few nights (weeks) of work gets you when you're bored and working with Walmart paints and cheap brushes from Jo Ann's.

 The idea, if you haven't heard me rant about the art design on this before, is that the bottom section of him is being summoned. Just like the spirits, his tail isn't all there. As you go up the tail/body, the body is coming more into existence. You can't quite see the details that I've thrown onto the spirit hosts on the bottom (they just have really white highlights that I'm proud of, but they blur out with the low quality of the camera), but luckily you also can't see some of the sloppy painting that I've done on the skulls so it all evens out and you're at least getting an idea of what it is that I'm creating.

It's not Mannfred the Mortarch quite yet, but his mount is getting there.