The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back...

Bleh. What a way to start December. Normally, I absolutely love this time of year. Its normally quiet at work so I get all those things that have piled up done and out of the way and with my wife's and son's birthdays as well as Christmas there's lots of celebrating to be done.

But these last few days have been a trial. Lots and lots of little things have all built up to be annoying one after the other and making me more and more agitated. Things falling over. Tripping on the boy's toys. Not leaving for work on time. The boy having a rotten night's sleep. Dropping things constantly. Then last night Alex poked himself in the eye with a paintbrush and got so upset about it that he threw up everywhere (if Alex gets really, really distressed, he vomits). Vomit all over our bed (twice), all over the bathtub. Thankfully the bathtub is easy to fix but at 9pm the last thing you want to be doing is to be changing your bedsheets and putting the foul ones in the washing machine. It took ages for Tash to calm him down (he didn't want to be anywhere near me and cried everytime he saw me).

Then this morning, I lost my wallet. My Mum and I tore apart the house looking for it but it was nowhere to be found. That was the last straw. I pretty much lost it and cracked the sh!ts. After three days of frustration, all I needed was to lose my wallet. This also made me very late for work and that just p!ssed me off even more. The wallet has been found by my long-suffering wife under the driver's seat of our car but the stress of not knowing where it was has put me off for the day. Bleh. I really, really hate losing things.

It just goes to show how very, very important it is to have a safety valve. Stress and frustration can build up ever so slowly until you blow your stack. I think I need to get myself a punching bag. Or I need to go and stand in the rain.

Apocalypse Prep: Part 1

As I mentioned in my last entry, I thought I'd post my progress in painting and converting my Tau Apocalypse army for CanCon 2011. Well here we go.

I plan on fielding three Tigershark AX-1-0's in my force. These are beautiful Forgeworld models that look like this:

There's one small problem, however. Each one costs 140 pounds. Gah. I just don't have that kind of money. Luckily, I have a solution.

Hasbro makes these:

They're from the GI Joe movie and they're called Night Ravens. The body piece, which is the part from the little red intake behind the front wings back, is exactly the same dimensions as a Tigershark. Exactly. The best bit is they cost me $14.99 from Aldi. Each. Sweet. So my plan is to turn them into this:

I have spare Railguns (the black gun bit under the red intake) and burst cannons (the multi-barrel gun under the wing) that I will cast up in resin and add to the body. I'll chop down the nose section which, fortunately, doesn't come attached to the main body.

I've already made progess on this. I've managed to chop down the nose of one of the models so that it fits into the main body similarly to that shown above. With some gap-filling and a proper paintjob, I expect they will look enough like a real Tigershark to pass muster. I hope to have one finished (bar painting) this weekend. Sweet.

Where HAVE you been?

Wow. The months fly by. Its such a cliche but at the same time its not uncommon to look up and think, "Geez! Where did that time go?". And so it's been for me. So what has been keeping me so busy?

Gaming.
I've mentioned my liking for the miniature games Warmachine and Hordes before. What I may not have mentioned that I am a volunteer rep for the company that produces them. For those of you not familiar with these games and their parent company, Privateer Press, we reps are called Press Gangers (Privateer Press - Press Gangers; get it?). Each year in Australia we hold a National Championship for these games to crown an Australian Champion. Its normally held at GenCon Australia, formerly Australia's "Premier Gaming Event" and this year I volunteered to run it. About 8 weeks out from the event, GenCon Australia announced they would not be running this year due to "financial concerns". This created a few hiccups around the traps but eventually we found a new venue and ploughed ahead with running our National Titles anyway. I wanted to make this event the biggest and best Nationals ever seen and to that end I wanted to give every player a prize-pack for coming along. It was quite a lot of work getting it all together. I could bore you with all the details but to make a long story short, I ran the event (with much help from friends and fellow Press Gangers), the players played and walked away with their swag of stuff and the various champions walked away with a swag of prizes. I thought the event went along pretty well on the whole but it ate a large chunk of my spare time.

Work.
I won't say much about work as you never know who's reading your blog and don't want to unnecessarily offend certain people. Suffice to say that I've had some big issues at work and have been focusing on getting under control there. Its been pretty stressful and I'll be glad when its all sorted out some more or I go on holidays a few weeks (yay January!).

Family.
Before you get worried, my wife and son are fine. We still have a few sleep issues with our boy but they are slowly improving. He goes to sleep much better now than he used to, he just gets pretty restless some nights and finds it hard to settle himself. We're working on it. Other than that, our boy is a pretty happy lad who is fairly easy to take care of. He has his good days and bad days but on the whole, the good far outweighs the bad. My wife is enjoying being back working at least two days a week and feels like she's contributing something (as if looking after our son wasn't enough). No, my family issues have been with one of my brothers. He suffers from pretty severe depression and recently it got the better of him. Thankfully, nothing tragic happened but it was touch and go for quite a while. While I didn't have to deal with most of the problems, it still made me worry a lot at a time when I had lots of worries already. Depression is a very serious mental health issue that many people don't realise is quite so bad until they have to deal with it (and I didn't deal very well with it I have to say).

But thank heavens a lot of it has passed and things are looking up. I hope to be blogging more regularly in the near future. I'm heading to Canberra to play in an Apocalypse tourney being run by my mate Bart in January and I am really looking forward to it so to motivate myself to get my figures ready I'll try and blog about my progress. Stay tuned.

Simple Joys

What is it that happens to adults that we find it harder and harder to find joy in our lives? Sure, we have the burdens of finding food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and those we care for but surely the burden is not so onerous that we cannot find simple joy in things?

I've been watching my son with interest over the last few months and I am constantly delighted and surprised at just what he can find joy and happiness in. Pulling a silly face at him can make him laugh himself silly. A few nights ago I was lying on the floor when my wife came over and I asked her to help pull me up. Alex squealed with delight and "helped" push me up. I then collapsed back down so he could do it again and for the next ten minutes I was pushed and pulled into a sitting position by my son and wife while he laughed himself to the point of tears. He has also taken to dragging around a tunnel that we have for him. He drags it from one room to another, laughing and smiling all the while.

The simplest things are an absolute joy to him and I love watching him enjoy it and as a result I find myself finding joy in these things, too. This causes me to ponder my initial question: what is it that happens to adults that we find it harder and harder to find joy in our lives? Is it the burden of responsibility? Is it the influence of the modern media and marketing? Or have we simply taken for granted the world around us and can no longer see the simple pleasures it has to offer us?

I know there will come a time when nothing I say will be right and I will be the very definition of un-cool but right now I am one of the most important things in his world and I am going to enjoy it for all its worth. Knowing I can make my boy laugh with just a silly face or playing peek-a-boo is possibly the most wonderful thing in this world. I thank my lucky stars for my beautiful son. Through him I have re-discovered a beauty and joy in the world that I had previously lost.

Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected! Infra-cells up!

Form Voltron! "And I'll form...the head!". Ah, Voltron. Yet another icon of mis-spent afternoons in front of that irradiating device we call television. I remember watching Voltron as a young boy and marvelling at the way five robot lions or 15 different vehicles combined to form a giant battle robot that could smite all before it. I preferred the Vehicle Force Voltron over the Lion Force team due mainly to the fact that the Vehicle Force team had planes, helicopters and trucks (the naval force portion were lame). Hell, the robot's feet were a pair of cars! He could skate along on those things (an important consideration in the early '80's). But still, even the Lion Force Voltron was pretty cool.

And now my favourite miniatures company, Privateer Press, have fed my childhood fantasies once more by releasing a Voltron Miniatures game! Based on their Monsterpocalypse system, Voltron: Defender of the Universe pits Voltron and a force of Galactic Garrison cruisers against the evil Prince Lotor's Lo-tron and their force of Skull Ships. The two forces battle it out over one of two maps representing either a supernova remnant or a comet flying through space. Medway and I got to play some games last night and it was fun. They've done a great job with the game and it does play like battle-scene from Voltron. Voltron consists of the 5 Lions in their "Alpha" form and can form up into Voltron while the evil forces have four Ro-beasts and Lotor's Command Ship that can form up into Lo-tron. The Cruisers and Skull Ships can be used to secure resources on the map such as power crystals or satellites or you can throw caution into the wind and have them try and blast the enemy robots or ships.

I lost both of the games I played last night as both Voltron and Lo-tron but it was still great fun. The dice just didn't like me and no matter what I did, I just couldn't hit anything that had a target number of 5. What the hell is it with 5? I also demanded we have a store rule that if whom ever is playing Voltron doesn't call "And I'll form...the head!" when they move into robot-mode they owe everyone in the store a drink. You still owe us all a drink, Medway! But I'll settle for one just for me...

Heh. Lots of fun. Form Blazing Sword!

Its an incredible Universe we live in.

This Universe is full of wonder. I am constantly amazed by just how incredible our Universe is. I've been watching the wonderful "Voyage to the Planets" series that aired on ABC1 recently and it is just fantastic. The images they have generated from the data that the various probes we have sent out into our solar system have collected are just mind boggling. The episode on Jupiter (my personal favourite planet) was fantastic. Despite the fact that I know a trip to Jupiter would be lethal due to the radiation field around it I still think that it would be one of the most amazing sites to see. A planet that over 1000 Earths could fit inside with a storm that has been going for over 400 years and could swallow our little world. Twice. Incredible.

But what was even better was seeing the scientists admit to what they don't know. So many of the moons in the solar system have features they can't explain such as Triton , Iapetus, Hyperion and Europa. And we know next to nothing about Pluto. Yes, yes, I know it's no longer classified as a true planet (its O.K. Pluto, I'm not a planet either) but we've observed it for 80 years now and still we know only it's relative size, orbit, a little about its surface and the fact that its main satellite, Charon, is about half its size. I'll be waiting with excitement to see what the New Horizons probe that will arrive in 2015 shows us about our closest dwarf planet. Who knows what it will show us about the Kuiper Belt objects it may encounter?

Another mystery is exactly what shape is our galaxy? Astronomers have a pretty good idea based on observations but exactly what it looks like will likely never be known. To get a good look we'd need to travel about 50,000 light years straight up or down relative to the galactic plane and that's a feat that will likely never happen in my lifetime or Alex's. Still, I wonder what the night sky would look like from a planet who's star lies about 20-30,000 light years above or below the galactic plane? How amazing would it be to look up at night and have the sky dominated by the swirl of a galaxy. The band of the Milky Way that we see is beautiful but how much more grandiose would the whole spiral be? That would be a sight I'd love to see.

I would have loved to do astronomy if only I could have dragged myself through the basic vector and optical physics classes at uni. I know they are essential to the higher-end stuff but really, they bored me to tears. Still, I just love to look up at the night sky.

Nothin' beats home cookin'

Yep. There's no denying that homemade food is best. Since the arrival of Alex, Tash and I have gotten somewhat lazy with eating. Alex is not a great sleeper (as I have mentioned before) and as such we are both often very tired in the evenings and get lazy with the cooking. Enter the Slow-cooker. What a wonderful invention. We can prep dinner in the mornings when we tend to have more energy and simply drop it all in the cooker. Set for "Low" and leave it to do its thing for the day. At the end of the day I'll simply make some roast potatoes or something equally nice and serve. Beautiful. Corned Beef, roast chicken, beef or lamb, stews, casseroles, etc. Simply delicious and packed full of veggies.

Yesterday we realised that we had some porterhouse steak in the fridge that had to be used. Neither of us were inclined towards a steak dinner so Tash suggested pies. We have a little pie-making device that Tash won years ago but that we haven't used in ages. So Tash seasoned the steaks and popped them in the slow cooker for a few hours. When done, they simply fell apart and tasted amazing (got to taste before using). Using the stock that was left in the pot, Tash brewed up some fantastic gravy and we cooked up some carrots, peas, corn, onion and capsicum. All mixed in with the shredded beef from the steaks and popped into pastry to make pies. Man they were good. They beat the cr@p out of anything you can buy in the stores. A complete meal encased in pastry. Oh yeah. My wife has the best ideas sometimes and man-oh-man can she cook. Gourmet meals and all that fancy stuff they show on things like "Masterchef" (bah!) are all well and good but simple and tasty home cooked meals are often the best. Duck L'orange and Souffle are nice and all but a lot of the time I just enjoy a simple home recipe like savoury mince, beef casserole or those wonderful meat pies. Yum.

Science is fun and cool.

On the whole, I like my job. Sure I b!tch a lot about undergraduate students and the fact that they can't follow the simplest of instructions or break everything they go near but on the whole my job is pretty good.

And days like today show just how interesting science can be. Today, the students are looking at Rheology. One of the compounds they make is called Carbomer 940. At a concentration of 1% in water it forms a fairly fluid gel (like runny hair gel). The students make a 0.2% solution (which is nearly as fluid as water) and measure its viscosity. This comes out to be very, very low (close to water). Then they add a 2.0% (0.5M) Sodium Hydroxide solution (otherwise known as Caustic Soda). This causes the pH of the solution to increase (become more alkaline). The effect on the gel is dramatic. It goes from being very fluid to being a thick gel in a matter of seconds. The mechanism behind this is that the Carbomer is tightly coiled at very low and very high pH levels and as such is quite liquid. At a neutral pH the carbomer molecule uncoils, making it very thick. The students continue to increase the pH until the solution is quite alkaline and see that the gel goes very thick at neutral pH and then becomes fluid again. Its very, very cool to watch as the change is so dramatic.

Another compound they work with is Methylcellulose. It’s weird stuff. It’s dispersible only in hot water but only soluble in cold water (I'm not sure why). So to make the solution, you need to have very hot water and disperse the powder in it. It will not dissolve, despite the high temperature. You then add ice cold water and you notice that the solution goes from a cloudy fluid to a thick, clear gel in a matter of seconds. And it’s fun stuff. Completely non-toxic (it’s edible), it’s the classic goo. It’s actually the stuff they use in movies for goo and saliva special effects. Ever seen Aliens? Remember the saliva that dripped menacingly from the aliens' jaws? Methylcellulose goo. The goo the Gremlin's had dripping off them when they came out of their cocoons? Methylcellulose. A guy in Scandinavia once tried to make ice-cream that stayed solid at room temperature and he used methylcellulose as the base. It worked apart from one fatal flaw: it tasted terrible.

Science is fun.

Lighten up, fat boy!

Well, it’s been a while since I updated. Life’s been busy, busy, busy. Work has finally ended its stupid cycle and I have time to turn around and scratch myself. Home life has started to settle a little and I’m hoping that things there are a little less stressful.

And its funny how easily you let the stress get to be too much and not even notice it. As I’ve mentioned before, my outlet is gaming. And last night it really did become my outlet and not in the good way. I was playing a game of Warmachine against Medway. My dice rolls had been average to poor up until my pivotal moment while Medway’s were doing considerably better. Then I reached said pivotal moment and lined up an assassination run on his Warcaster (Strahkov for those in the know) and charged on in with my Stormclad Warjack. I’d loaded it up on focus and ploughed right in (for those who don’t know, killing the Warcaster wins the game for the assassin). I miscalculated a distance calculation in the first instance and thought I’d fallen short but a quick re-measure showed my instincts had been right. I was in range of my target and let fly with the attack. All I needed to hit was an 8. With three dice, that’s fairly sure odds. Not to be though as the dice came up a seven. I swore. So I followed up with a second attack. Hit (barely). Yay. Damage: A paltry 6 (a roll of 3 on two dice plus the bonus). Bah! That was the last straw. My temper snapped and I threw the offending dice across the man-cave. What I thought was a pretty sure thing wound up as a botched attempt. In the end, I managed to win but the failed initial assassination run had left a bad taste in my mouth.

Later, lying in bed, I reflected on just how stupid and petty it was. It’s just a freakin’ game. Sure, my life hasn’t been going according to plan right now but still, it’s a just a game. I really need to lighten up and get over these outbursts. I can lose my temper very quickly over petty things and I need to try and reign that in. I don’t want my son to wind up with a short temper thanks to my example. So here and now I apologise to Medway for my poor sportsmanship. You’re a great sport and a great opponent. Thanks for the game and your patience.

On the plus side I do feel better now...

"It Sucks to be Me"

Here on Avenue Q! That was a great night. Tash, myself and a few of my work and gaming friends went to see Avenue Q last night and I was very happy to say it really lived up to all of the hype I've heard. I'm sure I'll be humming "The Internet is for Porn", "It Sucks to be Me", "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and "If You Were Gay I'd Shout Hooray!" for many days and weeks to come. Its even funnier if you're a parent of a young child as Seseme Street is often a staple part of your day.

But the other nice thing is this was Tash and my first night out in a long time. Last year we wnt to see my mate Greg in the Macbeth rock opera and we left Alex with my folks. He hated it and cried and cried until we got home. He was about 5 months old at that point and I'm not sure he was ready. He's now 15 months and is much happier to be left with his Nanna and Granda now. He was so happy in fact he seemed to be waving me out the door as we left, quite content to be left with my parents. He loves them a lot. And so Tash and I had a nice night out. I think we're going to have to do it more often now that we can. Next step: sleeping over at Nanna's or Meme's (that's what Tash's Mum likes to be called). That will be nice.

A very special moment.

Its the simple things that make you happy as a parent. Monday, my boy took his first steps. Three, unsteady steps before he fell onto his hands and then crawled the rest of the way at break-neck speed but nonetheless, first steps. His Mum and I are very proud.

But last night he took what I consider to be his first walk. He walked about a metre and a half without holding anything or anyone, didn't fall and made it to his goal. And he did it just for me. Tuesday nights are Tash's night out. She gets a break from Alex and he and I spend some quality time together, a boy's night. And to show off to me, he walked on his own. Tash is extremely jealous. He hasn't done that for her yet.

To say I am proud is a bit of an understatement. I feel very special that he decided to make his first real walk a special moment just for the two of us.

And doesn't he look pleased with himself?


I love my little boy.

Toll Roads!?! I hate freakin' toll roads!

Toll roads. What the hell is up with toll roads? Brisbane has recently "celebrated" (I use the term very loosely) the opening of the Clem Jones M7 Tunnel, commonly known as the Clem7. It is apparently the longest tunnel in Australia at 6.7km (or something). It allows people to travel from one side of the Brisbane River to the other without travelling through the City/Valley areas and avoiding lots of traffic lights. Nice. It cost $4.30 per trip. WTF!?! Why the hell does it cost me to use it? Didn't my taxes pay for the freakin' thing? And now they want to charge me for using it? I helped frikkin' pay for it! But even better, they have made the tunnel free for the first 18 days, then half price for the following 5 weeks. So like a good drug dealer, your first taste is free then they'll give you cheap hits until you're hooked, then charge you like a wounded bull 'cause you can't give it up. How can anyone use this thing and think its saving them money? They claim it will save you petrol. How? If you use the thing during Peak Hour, it will cost you $8.60 per day to use it and surely this tunnel will not save people over $40 in petrol costs per week? Time? Sure but at the cost of $40 per week? Surely it won't be that much faster than the current routes? If I was on a significant salary, I'm sure I could afford the $1100+ a year it would cost me to use the thing but the average bloke like myself can't afford it for a daily commute!

We have another river crossing being made as well: the poorly named "Go-Between" Bridge (yes, they really called it that). Another new road. Yay! Another way across the river. Yay! Another freakin' toll road! WTF!?! Yet another road built with public money that they're going to charge us to use. What in the hell? They claim it is to help recoup the costs of building the road. I can handle that (roads are expensive to build) but once the cost has been regained, will the toll go away? Not bloody likely. The Gateway Motorway paid for itself 10 years ago yet they kept the toll going. They're even talking about increasing it again.

The more I look at it the more I'd like to move away from the city.

Wow. Nerdcore.

Damn. I'm pretty Nerdcore. I have a couple of Nerf(TM) guns and their rip-offs. I have a very cool one that requires you to load the foam darts into shells and then fires them using a lever action that primes the gun and then ejects the empty shells. But when I saw that KMart(TM) had the Nerf(TM) Vulcan machine guns on sale, I had to get myself one. And damn its cool. A belt-fed, 25 dart capacity, fully automatic dart gun that comes with its own tripod. And its huge. There's no way Nerf(TM) designed this thing for kids. It's aimed squarely at nerds like myself. Check this out:

How Nerdcore is that? Pretty damned Nerdcore IMO. I need to get out more.

Holy Geek Retreat, Batman! Its a Man-Cave Update!

Yes! Finally I've gotten the Man-Cave organised. There's still a few tweaks here and there, like picking up the fridge I've got on hold for it ($50 makes for a good Man-Cave fridge methinks) as well as a few boxes of stuff still lurking under the house but otherwise, its ready to go! Its nice to have a space to hide in. I'm hoping to get some minis assembled and painted soon.

As promised a while ago, here's the pics:


Two pics of the outside and yes, its really is that tall. Three metres from ground to the top of the roof. Its gives it a nice, roomy feel inside.

And a few pics of the inside. As you can see I've got a nice, big painting table that I intend on putting to good use as well as space for a decent 6ft by 4ft gaming table in the centre (pretty much the standard on which most games are played for you non-wargamers out there). The shot of my shelves shows I still have some organising to do but on the whole, I'm very happy. My own little retreat from the world (bar the pram which will move as soon as we find a spot for it upstairs, or so I'm told). Now to find some time to use it...

Wet, wet, wet.

I like the rain. I love the feeling of serenity that comes over me when it starts to fall. I love the sound of it on my roof. I love the feel of it on my face. I especially like it when its accompanied by the rumbling of thunder and the flash of lightning.

But you can have too much of a good thing. Its been nearly two weeks now with near constant rain and I'm getting a little tired of it. And the main reason is: public transport. When its dry, I ride my scooter into work. Its fantastic for several reasons:

- Cheaper ($6.40 per day on the bus as compared to $8.00 per week in petrol on the scooter plus free parking).
- Faster.
- No waiting. (I hate waiting for buses. Its such a waste of time.)
- More fun.

I miss riding my scooter. Its way too dangerous to ride it in the wet. I've come off it twice in the wet now and simply refuse to risk it if there's the chance of rain. If you lose grip on one tyre in a car you've got three others to take up the slack. If you lose grip on one tyre on a scooter or bike, you've lost half of it and only have one tyre left gripping the road! Too scary, thanks very much. So to get to work I join the massed throngs and ride the buses. But bus seats are uncomfortable, other passengers tend to be very rude and the ride is unimaginably boring. Even with the iPod and its collection of Firefly episodes, movies and YouTube Muppet videos its a still a very boring and very uncomfortable trip. What kind of creature is man that it subjects itself to tortures of its own design like public transport, politics, advertising executives and peak-hour traffic? I wonder...

Mr Weather Man says we're in for another week of this. Bugger. I think I'm going to have to stand in the rain for a while tonight. Things seem simpler and less troubling when I do that. Strange that the cure to my rain-soaked woes would be to get rain-soaked. I never said I wasn't weird...

A University Summer.

Ah, a university summer is a wonderful thing. Firstly, we have a blissful 3 months without the undergrads making for a very quiet and mostly relaxing time. During the Christmas break we get the lab cleaned up and looking great and have a very relaxing time pacing ourselves with our paperwork.

Then comes the first week back of the students and the joy that is young women dressed for summer. Whew! I am a happily married man but I still appreciate the beauty that is the female form. And let me tell you that there is a LOT of female form to be appreciated at QUT right now. I have to remind myself that I am old enough to be a father to most of the women in first year! (There's also the problem of me being married, faithful and fat enough that most of them would rather gnaw their own arms off.) I also have to wonder what I would think if any of them were my daughter and they dressed like some of them are today. Would I let them out of the house? And does that kind of thinking make a Grumpy Old Man (TM)?

At any rate, I do very much enjoy the view here at Uni during summer. It really is very pleasing...

37 journeys around our sun...

Happy Birthday to me! Yay! I'm another year older. Funny thing is I don't feel any older. I don't really worry too much about my age. I'm pretty proud of every year I've spent circling this star of ours. I'm no genius and I'm fairly confident that I'm not going to win a Nobel or change the course of human history or anything like that (I'll leave that to my son) but on the whole, I'm pretty happy with my life.

Yes, I know I had a big b!tch about Bad News (TM) a couple of posts down but sometimes you need to let off steam. The reality is that I am still pretty happy with my life and having spent 37 years living it, I've grown rather fond of it.

Here goes for trip number 38 around Sol. Let's see what it holds...

Blood Bowl!!!!!

So last night I took it upon myself to show Medway how to play Blood Bowl. After recommendations from both myself and Greg to get the PC game and play, he explained to me that there were aspects of that game he found confusing. So I explained to him that he should play the boardgame and it would show him what was happening in the PC version.

Last night wound up as a good time to do that as the rest of the guys were finishing their 40K game so Medway and I collected up the stuff and headed off to a quiet corner to play.

He took Humans (a nice, generic team) and I took Necromantic (Werewolves, Frankensteins, Zombies, oh my!). Then he proceeded to wipe the floor with me. I helped him a lot with hints and tips so as to help him score but he rolled like a demon while my rolls were pretty sucky. He smashed my team around and I just couldn't do anything right. But at the end of the night I didn't care and I had a good time playing. Medway seemed to enjoy it too.

But at the end of it all I realised just how much I miss playing the game. Yes, I have the PC version but for me its really just not the same. The PC version is cool and all but really I love painting the figures (with a maximum of 16 players per team it's easy to get them done) and I just love the feel of moving them around the board and rolling dice. I need to try and find a way of playing it more often. I just wish that Ags and Draco were into it as we could have a great little 6-person mini-league. If only I could find more players and a little more time...

Sick of Bad News.

I've always been a proponent of the philosophy that life is like a footpath (sidewalk for you Americans). Just when you're walking along happily you seem to step in a big pile of sh!t and you have to take some time to step aside and wipe it all off before you can keep walking or else you'll always have a smell of sh!t following you around.

Well, it seems I've stepped in another pile. Its certainly not the biggest I've ever stepped in but I'm already tired of it. All I ever seem to hear nowadays is Bad News. It started last week when a good friend of mine told me that her mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her dad already has dementia and now her mum has been given 6 months to live. She then informs me that one of my ex-lecturers who I got on really well with has had a stroke and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He can barely communicate but the worst part is that he lives alone and it was three days before anyone found him. That's just horrible.

We are getting solar power installed in the house and we have had nothing but trouble with it. We signed the contract back in July of 2009 and once they had our deposit we heard nothing from them for 5 months. Every time we contacted them for details we got a "we'll get back to you" and then silence. Eventually my wife called and asked to talk to the CEO and was told that we would have work commence soon and they were sorry for the problems. Part of the install was the upgrade of our power box as the current one is over 50 years old (solar power systems generate a lot of heat). So a week ago we get a call from our sales rep to tell us that they aren't going to upgrade our box. They will refund us the cost of the upgrade once the installation is complete. We tell them, not good enough: we want the upgrade, not the money. We have plans to follow the upgrade. Nope, they won't do it. We argue and eventually I ask to speak with the CEO. I eventually get through to him and explain we are sick of the way we are being treated. Give us the upgrade we are paying for. He apologises again and tells us he will fix it. Yesterday, they come to install the panels. They leave without installing them telling us that the rails on the roof have not been put on properly. The sales-rep tells us that the contractors refuse to work on our roof because its an old asbestos roof (we told them this when we signed the contract BTW). Now, he has rescheduled the install but frankly, I'm sick of this crap from them. Really, really sick of it.

Last night I planned on getting some stuff done in the man-cave. I've moved all my stuff in, I just need to tidy it up and make it nice. Nope. Alex decided to be a pain last night and since my wife twisted her ankle yesterday, it was up to me to take care of him. He was a right royal pain and I'm very tired of the poor sleep patterns from him (as in he doesn't have one still). Don't talk to me about controlled crying and those other techniques. My son is smart enough to know that if he keeps us up all night, we will give in as sleep-deprivation is a torture technique for a reason (let me tell you). We only seem to get one good nights sleep from him for every two poor ones. I just wish he would settle down. We've tried every technique under the sun and a few that aren't and nothing seems to work with him. I love him but I'm really tired of this (literally).

Plus at work we have undergone a "restructure" of our faculty. This is supposed to make us more efficient. All I have seen so far is the faculty office trying to take all the power away from the technical areas and make our lives more difficult. Not one benefit have I seen but I can count at least 6 new obstacles to overcome. Joy.

Gaming. My outlet. The way I let off steam. Thursday night is my night with my mates and games. Last week i get a call from Humph that something has died uder his house (where we play) and that its unlivable. Great. Evening cancelled. Oh well, I have a Warmachine tourney Saturday. That will make up for it. I turn up for said tourney. And only 3 other people do as well. I know of at least 6 people who all said "Oh count me in, I'll definitely be there." Not one of them turned up. It was, frankly, bloody slack. Allen took time out of his weekend to run this event and people just didn't bother turning up. Next year we have both resolved to play Blood Bowl instead.

I know there are people out there who have it much worse than I do. I'm no emo and I am very thankful for what I have. But I am tired of Bad News. I'd like to see some good stuff happening. It's hard to be positive when all you hear is Bad News. I'd like to wipe the sh!t off my shoe and keep going, thanks.

Nana nana nana nana na! Man-cave!

Wheee! Horray for me! Man-cave ahoy!

Last year my wife and I discussed how to keep our son safe from various dangers around our house. One of the big ones is my nerd-hole. I have scalpels, super glue, apoxy resin, hot-wire cutters, drills and all manner of small, easily swallowed pointy things littering the place. Not only that but I can be a very messy individual and as such my nerd-hole gets rather, shall we say, cluttered. All right it looks like a bomb hit it most of the time.

So my suggestion was that my Dad and I build in a section under the house for me to use as my nerd-hole. My wife's suggestion was to build a garage in the back corner of our garden (which at the time resembled certain untamed wilderness areas of South America). She insisted as she didn't want to hear me swear everytime I hit my head on the low beams under the house. Fair call. Also the garage will add value to the house. Garage it is, then.

We call in various suppliers and eventually go with Titan. While they aren't the cheapest up front, they wound up being so as they included full insulation and council fees with the total cost. Who knew that the best-in-the-business could also be the cheapest? Before we finalise anything, I mention to the guy that I know that our sewer line runs towards the location we chose for our garage. His reponse is to check with the council and make sure we know where the pipes go. If there is a line there, we need a special slab poured which will make it more expensive. We check and find out that not only does out own sewer line run that way, but so does the main line for the entire street!!! Bugger. We also find out that to avoid the extra cost of the special slab we need to get at least 2 metres away from the line. Double bugger.

So the garage is placed right next to the house behind our carport. In all, a better spot as it looks good there and I have less distance to travel to get to it. Nice. New problem: our land has a 0.5metre drop off at the point. We need a retaining wall and fill to make it level. That adds aout $3000 to the cost of the garage (cheaper than the extra $5000 that the special slab would have cost). New bugger. Still, in the end my Dad and I built a retaining wall (a very satisfying accomplishment) and it got filled and slabbed.

Last week, the garage went up. Yay! To say I'm excited to have my Man-cave is a bit of an understatement. I'm a big believer that everyone needs their own space. Somewhere they can say: this is my space, my stuff, my rules. Now any parent will likely know that it can be tough finding that kind of thing for yourself. Kids have their room. Parents usually share one with each other and, inevitably, their kids so having your own space to hide in every now and then is really, really important I feel. The added bonus of my Man-cave is that the space in the house I vacate will become Tash's Lady's Lounge. We intend on putting a lockable cupboard and new desk in there and she can start on her crafty stuff again. I can't wait until this weekend when I plan on setting up the Man-cave fully with power, lights and all my crap. Pics will follow soon.

Nana nana nana nana na! Man-cave!

Nerd Ragin'.

I'm a nerd. I have been for as long as I can remember. I read books on facts out of sheer interest rather than being required to as part of study or work. My favourite TV show is QI. I can remember dialogue from movies or TV shows after having watched them only once. And I love wargaming. Pushing my little mandollies around the table and rolling dice in anger is just so much fun for me (well, usually). So I don't get the level of nerd rage that is being spewed at my current favourite games company: Privateer Press.

About a year ago their flagship game Warmachine(TM) (and its partner Hordes(TM)) is floundering under too many rules. So many new figures with new and funky rules have been released over the years that the game is drowning in errata and clarifications. The errata document was over 70 pages long! So the company announces they are re-releasing the game as Mark 2 in an attempt to streamline the game and make it play better than before (and it was pretty good the first time around). They have been developing it for the last year and are nearly ready to send it to the printers but they want the input of their gaming community. They want their customers to try out the new game and provide them with feedback on what works and what doesn't. And they provide this to us for free thanks to this wonderous digital age we live in. I've been gaming for nearly 25 years now and I have never encountered a miniature games company that has ever done this. Usually the first time you hear about a new rules set is about 6 months before it is to be released and by then its been at the printers for at least half that time again. This is a pretty big thing.

So we test their game and they make changes based on our feedback. And then we wait. We know the game will be released in all its glory come January 2010. But as a new version is coming, the gaming dies down as everyone waits for the new version. PP knows this is a problem from both a PR perspective and a marketing one so in September they give us the new rules for free to download. These will be the final rules and there will be no changes. Yay! We all start playing again. Some models still aren't as 100% awesome as we'd like but they are locked in now.

So now its January 2010. All we PP nerds buy our shiny new book and look at the models that are available in there. Shock horror! Some of the stats have changed! Now all the changes are, IMO, for the better. Yet some gamers are crying foul that PP have lied to us and that this is ruining the game. I mean, they are really, really upset like the sky is falling or that armageddon has arrived. What the..? I just don't get it. So PP made an error and told us that the free rules they gave us were set in stone but just before printing, they made some minor changes to models that weren't as awesome as they could be. I'm passionate about my gaming but in the end: its just gaming. I'm just pushing my mandollies around a table and going "pew, pew!" at my opponent with them.

Some people need to take a pill and have a good lie down. Why, oh why does the internet generate so much rage in people. Is it a side effect of the 'net itself or is a reflection of the way our society is heading? It makes me wonder...

And so another year begins...

So now its 2010. Ye gods. I know a lot of people say this but where did that year go? Its like I was told not long before Alex was born: "With kids, the days are long but the years are short". All too true! 2009 held days for me that I thought would never end with many sleepless nights and long, long days yet i sit here now and wonder what happened to the year.

I sit here at my desk and watch photos of my son and wife roll by on the digital photo frame and I am amazed at how much has happened to me in the last 12 months. I'm getting pics of Alex when he was 1 month old being quickly followed by pics of him at 11 months and I marvel at how much he has changed. From virtually bald to a head full of very curly locks (which is unusual as neither my wife or I have curly hair), from no teeth to four nasty sharp ones at the front (trust me, they draw blood) and from a little bundle wrapped in a blanket that slept most of the day (and stayed awake most of the night) to the boistrous bundle of beans that crawls around the house getting into anything that has a power cord and then smiling innocently at you when you berate him for it.

I also note the changes in my wife and see that while she looks a little older and more tired, she also looks happier than I have ever seen her. She smiles a lot more now that she's a mother and I can't remember a time in our lives together that I have ever seen her smile as much as she does now. Anyone who knew Tash five or more years ago may realise how strange that is. When we first met she was adamant that she would never, ever have children. Now she can't imagine life without Alex. I always knew I wanted to have children. I like them (well, most of them) and knew I wanted one of my own. Tash was confident that she didn't (which may seem strange that I would marry her but you can't pick who you fall in love with). But after many years together, she grew older and wiser and eventually decided that she was ready for children and so we have been blessed with the wonderful little boy we have now.

2009 was a turbulent year but when all is said and done, for me it was a good one. I say bring it on 2010. I'm a lucky guy and I'm looking forward to seeing what you hold for myself and my family.