Game Room Setup

01.06.2012

I think I found a guy more anal about how he sets up his boardgame stuff than I am. Although the video is an overview of his setup for Dust Tactics, I spent the whole time looking at all the stuff he's got in his game room (and not just the football jerseys framed on the wall).

He's got cool stuff. I'll admit I just ordered the dice game/tray and card holders off Amazon. But I haven't gone overboard. Yet.

Permalink boardgames hobbies

65

01.05.2012

Today would have been Mom's 65th birthday. She's been gone for 3 years, and I still think about her more often than I ever thought I would (which I'm pretty sure is a good thing), but I always think about her more on her birthday.

Tonight I followed Gina to the Nashville airport so she could drop off her son's car. It can get more complicated from there, but it's not really relevant right now. On the drive up I65, I had a weird feeling, a feeling that I was supposed to be driving toward Nashville on January 5th. It made sense, I had done it for years. On top of going to see Mom on my birthday, I would try to go see her on her birthday too.

I've made that trip along I65 so many times I made myself little landmarks to break up the monotony of driving through Tennessee. Exit 6 is the Boobie Bungalow. Exit 17 is Sarge's Shack. Exit 22 is The Tennessean Truck Stop. Then it's a longer stretch until the Love's at Exit 46. Tonight I was checking off exits and had that familiar feeling of "Here I am on Mom's birthday, heading up to Tennessee."

It wasn't a bad, melancholy feeling. Somehow, it felt good to remember that this was what I used to do.

So even though I was on my way to the Nashville airport, somewhere between The Tennessean and Love's I ended up singing Happy Birthday to Mom. Then I told her I love her and I miss her.

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WIP From Tues Night

01.04.2012

Tuesday night I continued painting and gluing the miniatures I was working on last week. You'll notice a lack of a close up of anything as up close, they still need a lot of work. I've got some (paint) bald spots on most, and each fighter needs another coat of flesh color before adding washes.

The zombie stripper is less green - in normal light she was looking like a blonde She-Hulk, so she's more normal-fleshed now. Almost too much so, but I think I've slapped enough paint on that one.

I think the details in the fighter faces is going to be lost since there's a year-old coat of paint, then primer, then more paint. It's a good thing this is all a test/learning process.

I'm still enjoying it though!

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies

I Do Not Have Too Much Time On My Hands

01.03.2012

I have no 2012 resolutions, but I'm still in the process of figuring out what I want to do this year. But they're not resolutions. Honest. I hit about 50% following through on resolutions I make, so I'm skipping it this year.

I do have plenty I want to do, I just have to find the time to do it. I'm generally pretty good at managing my time, as I stay realistic. I've learned to factor in time for the little things that take up extra time before (or during) the allotted time.

For example, one of the things on my list of things I want to do is more board game prep. This can be anything from painting miniatures to putting together paper model scenery. I've already decided Tuesday nights are the dedicated night for this. It's easy enough to say I'm going to paint Tuesday nights, but I'm not going to sit down from 5:00 to 10:00 painting.

• I've got to wind down after work, so if I got home at 5:00 it would be at least 6:00 before I got around to painting.
• Even if eating during the wind down hour, dinner prep, consumption, and clean-up is going to take at least an extra half hour.
• Got to factor in nightly surfing, email, and phone calls.
• Regardless of all of the above, I've got to be in the right mood/frame of mind.

So after it's said, I should be able to fit in 2 or 3 hours of quality hobby time on a Tuesday night. Fair enough, but what all am I wanting to hobby forth and do?

• The aforementioned board game prep. There's a wide enough expanse of what I want to do that I shouldn't have to worry about getting bored for a while. The main thing is that with painting miniatures I'm slowly getting better, but I'm nowhere near as good as the pictures I see on various sites I surf and even the other people that I know that paint. But I still enjoy it, as it's relaxes me away from the computer. I need to talk to Jer and Keith about a regular (monthly) Widgey night, too.
• Unity development. This has been on the back burner for a couple of months. I've got a Unity/JavaScript tutorial book to start on, which will also serve as a good refresher back into Unity. I also lack 1 program being able to complete the Poser->Unity workflow, so I should just spend the $60 and get it over with.
• [Fun] Web development. There's a couple of tweaks to this site I want to make. I haven't tweaked anything in a while. My tweakers are getting rusty.
• Read. I tend to take the Comic/Graphic Novel route for my quality time bathroom visits, but I've got 3 novels that have been sitting on the bookshelf for months that I want to read. I'm a horrendously slow reader, and these books aren't reading themselves!
• Play around with Motion on the Mac Book. I've still only turned the laptop on once since buying it back in November.
• The treadmill at the wellness center beckons me.

There are subsets of the above, but I've got plenty to do, especially if you factor in Gina time and keep up the Monday Night Raw @ Matt's tradition.

Whatever type of schedule I come up with, it still has to be flexible enough for the little things that pop up. I don't want a schedule with something to do every night. I know there are nights I just want to flake out and watch a movie. This Thursday I'm going with Gina to Nashville to pick up the young'uns from the airport (or drop off a car, I'm fuzzy on the details). I think a good schedule has you doing something 3 out of 5 open nights, that way when something else/more important (at least in someone's eyes) you can shift things around without getting behind.

So that leaves me 2 nights to fit in Unity, Web, Reading, MacBooking, and Treadmilling. I see nights with a weekly featured hobby popping up.

Permalink hobbies random

Merry Christmas from ThinkGeek.com!

12.28.2011

I make a purchase from Think Geek annually, as they tend to have something nerdy on sale around Christmas that will end up being right up the alley for either me or one of my nerd cadre. This year, it was something for me.

In the clearance section of the Think Geek website was the Lilliput USB Monitor, a 7" monitor that can be hooked up to a computer via USB (2 ports needed, as it draws extra power from those ports to power the monitor). A couple of years ago, I got 2 of these little monitors and integrated them into my home setup when they weren't hooked up to a laptop in order to give me a little more real estate. I've gotten used to having a 7" area devoted to download status or constantly having a browser window open that I can see when I'm working on something. Dual monitors have gotten me spoiled to when I'm working on a laptop, it's hard to see everything in just 17"!

Since purchasing my new MacBook I haven't done much with it. Some extra screen area would come in handy, so an extra USB monitor for the laptop would be nice. The 2 hooked up to my desktop don't go anywhere - they've become an important part of my setup there. I need a new monitor for the laptop! A monitor on sale!

The monitor from Think Geek is normally $100. The clearance sale had marked them down to $75. Thanks to signing up to receive actual postal mail from the company, I had a $10 off coupon code which would almost take care of the $8 shipping charge. I placed my order and all went well with arrival set to be after Christmas as I was placing my order on Dec 21. I was in no rush, so that was fine by me.

After my order was placed I started poking around the site some more, and noticed they no longer showed the touch-screen version of the monitor. I remember it a touch-screen version being made by a different company, but the product page always listed both monitors together. A touch-screen version would be cool. Extra nerdy! I think they used to be an extra $50 or so, but that might be worth it at Christmas time. But alas, none was listed. Maybe this is why the USB monitors had headed to the clearance section?

Yesterday parcels arrived on my stoop, with a Think Geek package among them. I opened the box and found the 7" USB monitor. The box looked a little different than what I remembered from my first order of these those few years back, but who keeps the same packaging these days? I looked at the box, yep, "Lilliput", and then farther down "7 inch USB touch screen monitor".

Touch Screen? What the huh?

7" plug & play touch monitor.

I went back and looked at my order. My invoice showed the regular, non-touch monitor. The product page shows the regular, un-touch monitor. I could find no mention of a touch version anywhere on the site. But they managed to read my mind and send me the monitor I really wanted. That would make it hard to return, especially since I wanted what was sent more than what I ordered.

Since Think Geek didn't list the touch version anywhere, I found one at Amazon for $165 for comparison to the $75 I ended up spending. If Think Geek had the touch version listed I might feel obligated to try and return it, but since it's not I'll just rationalize that as a good reason to not bother them about all of this and enjoy my $75 touch screen Christmas present from Think Geek.

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