Sabaticalish

05.25.2026

I've been doing a lot of printing, and re-printing, without much to show for other than cardboard boxes full of printed plastic that I'm either going to add magnets and/or paint.

After a little more than 3 months since posting anything, I think it's time to admit I'm taking a blogging break. I've taken them in the past, too. There's nothing going on (hobby progress, work, life in general) that merits posting or remembering later. There's a couple of gaming blogs I follow that have just gone silent over the past couple of years, and I wonder at times if those folks are ok. As such, this serves as "I'm ok" until the next post shows up.

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I'm Alive Update: Nov 2025

11.12.2025

2 months ago I posted about finishing painting the Heroquest core set. You think in 2 months I'd have something else to post about. Well, it seems I vastly underestimated the scope of the next thing I would work on.

I mentioned Jer getting a Bambu printer and alluding to a printing project for dungeon tiles. Now I have a Bambu printer and will allude to a printing project for dungeon tiles.

I succumbed to peer pressure from Jer and Keith and (re)joined their cult of FDM printing as the Bambu A1 prints really good quality and, most importantly, is easy to setup and print each job. One of the things I've had to get past since my original foray into FDM printing is that it's ok to waste filament. Part of the aforementioned ease of the Bambu is self-cleaning and calibration available before each print job. Add in how easy it is to switch hotends, such as the fine resolution 0.2mm, and printing is easy! Dialing in those fine print details is a little more work, mainly because of how easy it is to set up those print jobs and each little tweak might make a difference I pretend I can see.

The big issue I ran into after paying attention to the first couple of batches of prints was that the corners of my prints were warping upward. Searches told me this could be either too hot (bed) temps, too cold temps, or other stuff I chose to ignore. My fix went the direction of a colder bed, lowering the hotend temp after the first few layers, and adding brims. This seemed to work fine! Until the outdoor/garage temp dipped below 60, them some random prints would either start spaghetti printing at some later point, or not adhere to the plate. This seemed to be an obvious "not hot enough" problem, so I returned to hotter temps and kept the brim. 3 days of this and things are printing ok when the garage temp drops to 47 °

Pics of random printed pieces isn't much too look at. Over the last 2 months I've printed some Sci Fi shuttle parts - about 4 times between scaling issues and refining settings. The dungeon is from Heroboard, using the larger 123% scale (larger than they recommend) and lots and lots of magnets. I've just started printing hallway floor tiles, which at the resolution and rate will take minimum of a week if the printer ran constantly. After that are room tiles (11 days minimum) and walls/doors (don't know). While my 2025 hobby goal was to paint the Heroquest minis, I secretly wanted to have the dungeon printed and together too. That latter ain't going to happen.

I've got another batch of Cyberpunk minis primed. Soon I'll have some pics of those trickling onto the site.

Permalink 3D Printer HeroQuest rambling

Pile of Shame vs Pile of Retirement

02.10.2023

Over the last week or two the subject of Gaming and associated meta-hobbies has come up in either conversations or posts I've come across online. Most of these subjects were along the lines of lamenting that there's more prep-work that game playing these days, which is also just part of the nature of the games we're drawn to. I went through this conversationally a few years ago which put me on the hobby-road I'm on now. I like to call it I'm OK With That Road, which is more like a 2 lane road you see heading toward the horizon in the distance.

With that, allow me to share my list of unpainted minis, ie the popular Pile of Shame.

In this list of what I track, I claim to have 3205 minis, of which 709 are painted / 2496 unpainted. That's a lot to paint. A lot of those are included in games I'll likely never play, like the original Zombicide and its butt load of expansions. As such, a few years ago I started a sub-category of Minis I'd Like To Paint, of which I currently have 609 of 1445 painted. With those impressive numbers out of the way, I now get to the root of my approach and acceptance of the popular Pile of Shame.

I don't care about game play or the games the minis are supposed to be for.

I've mentioned before my cyclical decade timeline of gaming interest as far as actual game play. I bought a butt load of games during the peak of that interest. Later on, I looked closer and admitted that I'd gotten games for the majority of popular game mechanics and must-have titles, but I wasn't that interested in playing any of them. Ok. Lesson learned and cut back on buying games enforced.

The thing I enjoy is the toys that come with the games, primarily because it gives me something to do with my hands that gets me away from the computer that I sit in front of a minimum of 8 hrs/day. Gluing, painting, cursing at, accruing supplies. That's my real hobby. Normally I would make plastic models or train layouts, but the diversity of game toys (minis, scenery, whatever you want to call it) is the appeal to me.

My excuse is that I can always use what I paint for a game. Who needs 3205 minis just for that?

So I buy minis that look fun to paint. I buy them and usually add them to the pile/list instead of painting the latest thing I though looked fun. Before writing this, I just bought some more because Miniature Market is running a 10% off sale for the weekend. 1 of the minis I bought has been on my wish list for over a year, and was there in case I needed some padding to get to free shipping. To get the free shipping on the 10 minis that look cool that I'll paint someday because they were 10% off, I bought an extra mini. That mini cost more than what actual shipping would have cost without it, but that's logic best to ignore.

Everyone has their own rules for what's fun and why you may do things a certain way. Just don't let someone else's definition of what you should or shouldn't do - especially something you do for fun - steer you away from having said fun.

Now I really should get back to painting something....

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Still Not Dead Checkin

06.22.2020

I saw the above somewhere on the Facebook and thought it appropriate for me.

Since it's been over a month since I last posted anything I thought I'd check in with the internet. Hobby-wise I've completed nothing. At best I've painted parts of some minis and made most of a 2nd floor mall store. I'm not in a real hurry to finish any of this, so we'll see how long it takes to get something post-worthy on the hobby front.

The highlight of my free time has been playing GTA with Jer. I've been playing GTA5 Online, according to my stats, for 3 years. All of those 3 years were me running around on a private server so as to avoid 13 year-olds sniping me. Now I'm enjoying the mix of showing Jer neat things about the game while discovering what missions can be played with more than 1 player. It's like a whole new game!

I've been concentrating on studying for the Salesforce Platform Developer exam over the last month. 3 months, really, but this last month I finally got a good groove into how elder-me can study and retain.

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Birthday Week Recap

03.11.2019

My birthday week didn't exactly go off like I'd planned. I didn't do as much hobby-oriented what- not as I had planned, but I still marked some things off my list.

I wrapped up my Top 10 Movies viewing, which was truly a Top 10 I was In The Mood To Watch That I Hadn't Seen Recently. Wrapping up from the first 2 I listed last time:

• Green Mile (1999) - Favorite Tom Hanks Drama. It was close between this and Forrest Gump.
• Raid: Redemption (2011) - Favorite Jakartan Action Movie.
• Inception (2010) - Favorite Movie (and it hurts a little to admit that, but it's true).
• I Am Legend (2007) - Favorite Vampire (technically) Movie.
• Oblivion (2013) - Favorite Tom Cruise Movie, although Minority Report pairs well with I Robot, which sounds a little out of the blue but when the list is "in the mood to watch that I hadn't seen recently" some odd things do and don't make the cut, which can then influence other options.
• Desperado (1995) - Former Favorite Movie. I don't know what "favorite" category I'd put this in, but I still greatly enjoy this movie. And I quote it way too much, still.
• 2012 (2009) - Favorite Disaster Movie, because it's got all the disasters.
• About Time (2013) - This might be more of a chick flick than Some Kind of Beautiful, except there's no "lost love" act in the middle to overcome.

Kind of interesting that the newest movies on the list are from 2013. Maybe I need a new list - favorite movies from the past half-decade?

I finally made it to Gardendale to have lunch at the closest Shrimp Basket. Beach food not at the beach isn't as good as it is at the beach. A ~90 minute drive to find this out is a lot better than the 6 hrs it takes to reach the beach, though. On the way back, there was a wreck on 65 roughly 5 minutes after I got back on to the interstate. It was bad enough that the interstate became a parking lot for 90 minutes. This was the 2nd time I've been parked on an interstate, the first time being about 12 years ago - both times involved some type of wreck with a tractor trailer, but I've never known any other details for the cause of either. Interesting thing that's happened both times - somebody had a football and started tossing it around.

My old man moment of being stuck - I had to pee about 20 min into being parked, and didn't know how long I was going to be there. So I waved politely to the trucker behind me and aimed to the shoulder, after making sure no emergency vehicles were flying past, and I relaxed my bladder and for the first time ever I peed on an interstate. 50. Peeing on the road. That's me.

I wrapped up the week by getting sick. After catching Strep 3 weeks ago, I was paranoid when the same symptoms hit me Saturday. For someone who doesn't go to the doctor very often, I've now been twice inside a month. Good news though, I don't have Strep. Or the Flu. Just a really bad sinus infection, but without being stopped up like I am with every other sinus infection. A shot in the butt, various drugs, and I should hopefully be feeling fine in a few days. 50 year old me has different symptoms, this is going to take a little getting used to.

Permalink movies/tv/dvd rambling road trip