Upgrade time!!!

Ya know, 8 years is an awful long in ‘computer years’. Its…well, like eons! 

As such my ancient Mac mini’s lifespan has come to an end. Or rather its life with me has, I sold it and its currently Fedexing its way on to a new life. Hey, $54 was better though admittedly not as fun as putting it out of its misery via the ol' sledgeaxe! 

At maximum zoom, this was the best EVE looked on my old Mac Mini.

At normal view well...yes it was just plain awful. 

New macs are unaffordably astronomical in price, for example the one I have at work clocked in at approximately $8400! That price tag aside, given my 'test drive' of that computer over the past 6-months, I'd never buy one now. Seriously, its the worst Mac I've ever worked on! Despite that experience I kept on stubbornly looking at refurbed Macs whilst milking the old mini along as a brand new replacement was out of the question, especially for something I just use for internet browsing and playing EVE online. 

The latter of which I was quite limited in doing given I was running it on minimum settings, and incapable of any form of PVP (a HUGE part of EVE), and…well just about every other aspect of the game was barely functional. Finally, fed up with the obvious Wolfy just asked me point blank: 

'Since we can’t afford a mac, would you be open to getting a PC?'

Huh, honestly that thought never really occurred to me but yeah, sure. Aaaaaand with that her gears got-a-going! Recruiting our friends Chikar and Screech, as well as getting both her parents and my Mom, as well as Screech to chip in on it for my birthday, and I am now up and running on a brand new PC!

My new PC!

Ugh, docked in station was a whole other nightmare before, sparks, steam, unidentifiable shit (space ships) moving around in the background made the all too necessary need to dock my own private hell in EVE.

'Look honey, you can actually see your ship when it undocks!' (an actual quote by Wolfy, she also says the game looks like it might be fun now...).

It was a bit of a trial as UP-fucking-S broke it whilst shipping it twice, requiring returns for repair (and an excessive amount of physical mileage for the average PC, and the proper cosmic allignment...an eclipse to be specific), but delivery # 3 was a charm and all is good now after a bit of set up assistance from Screech.

Hey look! There's actually stuff on the surface of planets now, and here I was ignorantly hoping/assuming they were all bland, matte colored gas giants...

I can also run Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator via my work account of Adobe's creative cloud at home now, another thing my old Mini was too old to run. This was especially frustrating after my employer's IT department gave me the green light to do so months ago. 

As any EVE player knows, long-distance commutes across high-sec in a freighter are sometimes necessary, though certainly not entertaining. Previously such flights were spent painting minis, whereas this one was spent blogging. Running EVE and something else!?! A sheer impossibility on the old mini! Indeed, this is my 1st blog post from my new machine.

So, many, many thanks, especially to my Beloved Wolfy, as well as everyone else who helped out on my awesome birthday present!!

Painting minis in space...

My beloved Wolfy was stricken with a cold this weekend, and as such we skipped going to the FLGS in hopes of not passing Nurgle's blessings onto the rest of the gang. So, whilst she slept for most of the evening, I geeked out with a combination of miniature painting and EVE Online.

More commonly known as Spread Sheets in Space, I've done quite a bit of painting whilst in EVE as I'm not a spread sheet person. While shuttling ships around on auto-pilot I found anomalies galore in a neighboring system to my destination, and the fact that I had them all to myself! That's about as good as high-sec PvE gets. Sure all of the combat sites would have been more entertaining (and probably lucrative), but I opted for mining a bunch of rare ores instead. Its much easier to paint when you can play afk.

Ah yes, this is the life....

There was some excitement of a sort though I guess. I got into a discussion-turned-argument with my alt. character's corp execs about just how fucking boring the corp itself is. No, this wasn't the first time, but it got a bit more heated this go round, with one rage-logging off and myself eventually just closing the chat channel in disgust. They did mention a fun idea, but quickly killed/buried it in their typical over-abundance of caution, so much so that I likened it to wading thru government red tape. 

They were not amused.

That said, my in-corp character hasn't been given the boot, so I guess they'll get over it. Of course I said this was about painting in space and yes, amid the furious typing another infantry squad for The Buffet Assault Group as well as my HMG team managed to get painted, additionally my third infantry squad got a base coat too.

Blue Squad standing by...

The weapons team's armor is slightly different, hence the altered paint scheme.

A group shot of all of my painted Gruntz thus far.

Up close they're not much to look at (curse you zoom lens!), but all together and when they make it to the table top, I think they'll be looking pretty good.

The Buffet Assault Group

That was the name of a little, 1-man corp I had in EVE Online (the corp's description was: Coming to a Golden Corral near you...). I created it (1) because the name amused me (it came out of an in-game convo of some sort) and (2) so my alt character would no longer be subjected to the endless stupidity of the NPC chat channel. However, with the sale of that alt. the corp died...in EVE. It will soon live again however, via my 15mm Gruntz army.

As I said last week, I hadn't read any of the fluff for Gruntz, but that didn't stop me from making my own, and still amused by that name, The Buffet Assault Group has now landed in the realm of 15mm and is awaiting its first recruits (who are still out in the mail somewhere).

Any similarity to Golden Corral's logo is purely coincidental...

Like most Merkz units, The Buffet Assault Group was formed around a core of retiring Interstellar-military Gruntz. Unsurprisingly, they were fed up with the low pay, poor equipment, lousy living conditions, and especially the bad food provided by their employers. Fairly typical complaints that many, if not most in their profession (both friend and foe) could easily relate too. Pooling their resources and expertise instead of reenlisting, they formed their own Merkz unit instead.

Dubbing their new outfit: The Buffet Assault Group (after an inside joke of some sort), and referring to themselves as 'T.B.A.G.erz', they built their unit around the core ideal of Merkz FIRST!. Merkz FIRST! doesn't mean that they're afraid to stick their necks out when the shit hits the fan, but rather that their Merkz are well taken care of both on and off of the field in terms of training, equipment, living standards and (perhaps most importantly) the food needed to be really good too!

Overall, the Group's combat prowess isn't exceptional when compared to their competition. However  the one area where they do excel, is in offering potential employers a fighting force of Merkz who are both highly disciplined (Because if you're a fuck up, you're out! and you know that other Merkz units won't be nearly as good to you as we are!) and of exceptionally high morale. That's something even interstellar-government forces can't offer! Happy Merkz tend to stay out of trouble, and the Tbagerz have had few issues with the 'locals' during their contract deployments thus far. There have been suspicions surrounding the Group's so-called BlackOps platoon on occasion, but no evidence of criminal activity has ever been proven. 

Whilst numbers will always vary, The Buffet Assault Group tries to hold its numbers to an understrength battalion consisting of a combat infantry company (the 'Alphas') and a support  company (everyone else). This small size makes them better suited to corporate installation and/or small settlement defense. That said, they are capable of (limited) offensive operations in all ground based environmental conditions.

The Buffet Assault Group operates as follows:

Alpha Company: The proverbial 'boots on the ground'. The Alphas are the best 100 (or so) men and women who will get your shit done! In battle they wear armored Haz-Suits and are armed to the teeth! The Merkz of Alpha Company pride themselves on being the 'meat and potatoes' of the Buffet!

Bravo Platoon (a.k.a.: BlackOps): Bravo platoon like to think of themselves as the 'Black Heart and Happy Soul' of the Tbagerz. The menergie of specialists in Bravo are in charge of medical care, supplies and logistics, and of course, there's the vaunted cooking staff! If the Tbagerz need it, Bravo gets it! Always via all of the appropriate channels of course! If those channels run dry…well, Bravo comes thru anyway. Don't ask how, they just do (which has led to the platoon's unofficial 'BlackOps' moniker).

Charlie Platoon: Charlie is Command! Every officer regardless of which company or platoon that they're in, technically belongs to 'Charlie'. Meaning the Charlies are responsible for everything! From long term 'stratergy' and tactics in the field, to training, negotiating contracts, taking care of and maintaining the discipline of their Merkz, running interference for Bravo, and administrative bullshit up to and including paper pushing, Charlies do it all. Whilst they're called Charlies by everyone in the battalion, the Charlies often refer to themselves as the Migraine Platoon.

Delta Platoon: Delta is the unit's vehicle troop. Delta members like to say that 'Alpha may be the meat and potatoes, but Delta is the gravy'. Delta operates and maintains the Group's combat vehicles, mechs, 'toys' and the Groups' beloved Golden Corral (a refurbished military aero-space landing ship named for an ancient Terran Buffet restaurant chain). To keep everything running smoothly, Delta works closely with Bravo platoon, and sometimes so closely that all to often the Charlies can't figure out who belongs to which platoon!

:-)

Sunday afternoon rim jobs...

...bases, I meant BASES!!! Get your minds out of the gutter! lol, however with a title like that, the page-hit counter ought to spike up just a bit!

The painted chunk of my army (minus the tank)

As I stated previously, the paint I was using for my Quar's Warmahordes bases was the discontinued color of Gretchin Green. Luckily, as one of GW's 'base' paints, it was easily covered with Warboss Green (and please, please, please let that color be in current production!).

With their sudden change to the Soviet side, my Quar Bagpiper has taken a leave of absence. It remains to be seen right now whether or not I'll do a British North African list, or just stick with the Soviets who have quite a bit more variety of forces than I had realized!

Overall I think the painted portion of my army (20 minis if I include the tank) looks good! I need to come up with some other form of squad numbering though as the fugly roman numerals which I used before was (intentionally) covered up. The Soviet army book gives you a squad of up to 12 grunts with all of the options available for free! That will negate all of my recent infantry purchases, and as such I told Kushial to make a 500 point list for our game this weekend.

Behold! The free squad. Made up of survivors from the various units shattered by the German Blitzkrieg! Unfortunately they've not had time to find new, or at least consistent uniforms. Note: The Grunt with the Shotgun will be the LMG's loader for the time being.

I also painted two more Partisans, and these minis are still my favorites of the Quar! The one thing this army needs is some more Sabol trays though, as I have all of the unpainted minis doubled up in their slots.

As colorful in character as they are in clothing, my partisans (well, the painted ones anyways)!

lol, As you can see, I also had some help from our kitty Kiya. She was all to happy to make sure my EVE online, afk mining was running  just fine when I was off clear coating minis!

Spaceships exploding everywhere!

o/

Yes this weekend we played what's becoming the usual epic game of X-Wing. However this go round was my turn at total dice failure where I could evade NOTHING! Oh well, Voril has had that twice now, and Wolfy as well, Kushial you're next! lol.

Instead of a bat rep, I've got pics of another favorite of mine: EVE Online. I've been playing EVE for years now and am kinda bored with it to be honest. Nonetheless there are occasional highlights. For example, I have one of my characters in the Red Vs. Blue alliance. RvB is easily the 'friendliest' PVP you'll find in EVE, and this past Saturday they hosted a Destroyer Free For All (FFA) as a send off for the retiring CEO of Blue Republic.

The set up was destroyers only (aside from 2 Battleships fielded by alliance execs, from which prizes were given for top damage dealers and to whomever got the final killing blow), the dessies were fully fitted and provided by RvB for free in allotments of 5. Each ship was to be insured for the maximum amount which netted the user a profit of 700k-1mil isk (the in-game currency) per lost ship (EVE insurance fraud for the win!). It was a blast and I played for close to 4 hours, losing 21 dessies (the first was my own which I flew directly to the event, the rest were RvB supplied) and I 'whored' myself onto 69 kill mails.

Huzzah!

'Whoring onto KM's' is the fine  EVE tradition of not linking your weapons for maximum damage, but instead shooting at everything in range. In many cases, the amount of damage inflicted is minimal to negligible, who cares? Your character was on the killmail which is all that matters! At certain points I was in scattered pockets of combat and I grouped my shots getting top damage dealer and/or killing blow on several of my fleet-mates. All in all it was a hellova good time!

Here are some screenshot highlights:

In the center is a Raven class battleship moments from detonation!

This is a Dominix battleship experiencing it's own death by a thousand paper cuts...

One of my Dessies, on the verge of destruction!

Green icons are in corp, purple in fleet, and off to the left you can see Jita 4.4, the busiest space station in all of EVE. On the average day, there are about 1100-1200 players in system at any given time, RvB had the numbers up to 2100+ at one point meaning the lag was atrocious! CCP had blocked the gates into the system periodically due to the strain on the server, meaning it took me a few minutes of clicking 'jump'  just to get in system while stuck in the traffic jam at a neighboring system's jump gate...

Another of my ships moments before its demise!

Eventually I had to log off as the lag had gotten so bad I was down to 1-2 FPS, rendering the game unplayable. That and it was dinner time!

'Granola Geekdom' (at it's finest?)

o/

One thing that's been kinda interesting here of late at the FLGS is that we're being studied. Taylor, who is a friend of Screech (and by this point, the rest of us) is taking an anthropology class at ETSU and is doing an ethnology-anthropological (or something like that) study on sub cultures. In doing so, she decided on the local warhammer geek culture (her fiance plays 40k which is what spawned the idea).  As such she hangs around, making observations and scribbling notes, interviewing us on our thoughts on the subject and what not. Its all kinda neat really.

Anyways, when doing interviews the weekend before last, as I was going to retrieve some orks (whose trukk had just been blown up by their own looted wagon) that were on a nearby table to where she was interviewing Neverness (periodically I'd pass by & heckle him, and he was all too happy to reciprocate during my interview). I heard my name mentioned and inquired about what they were talking about. He said they were discussing how 'granola' I was. lol, what? Later when I was being interviewed, she asked about the geek lifestyle and its stereotypes and I connected the dots.

The stereotype as we all know is that we're all socially awkward virgins, who shun women (thru our social ineptitude), and daylight and live in our mom's basement, etc. On her first visit Screech and I even went into the 'there's a girl in the game shop, panic!!!' type of theatrics which she found both amusing and alarming.  Basically though, we were discussing the varied lifestyles of our group and how we all still connect via 40k.

The 'granola' label has kinda amused me these past two weeks and so I thought I'd do a recap of this past weekend to see if it really fits. Here goes:

Friday Night:

Something I worked up on my break at work.

We met up at Neverness' place to make our new characters for his next Dark Heresy campaign. This is the first time we've gotten together to play DH since late last spring, and are looking forward to it. This will be an Adeptus Arbitrator campaign, and for 'inspriation' I brought donuts. No proper arbitrator can execute (key word there) Imperial justice without some good donuts!

Donuts, the anti-granola? lol!

Saturday morning:

Checking up on my afk corp mates...

After staying up too late at Neverness', I managed to sleep in till 9am, which is pretty late for me. I've taken it as a sign of progressing into middle age that I can rarely, if ever sleep in anymore. Sleeping in till noon or later is a thing of the past. Most saturday mornings I wake up at about 7:30. ...sigh...

After getting up, I then puttered around the house while playing eve online (semi-afk as usual). I  made adjustments to my pack, filled it up, etc. ate lunch, and then went out to 'play in the woods' for a while.

Saturday Afternoon:

I'm going on a 3-day backpacking trip on the Appalachian trail the end of this month. I haven't gone backpacking in close to a decade, so I've been prepping for that. We're not going to be pushing real hard or anything in an attempt to go too far (a common mistake made by novice backpackers). My Mom and her BF are going as well. He and his buddies have hiked from the AT's starting point in GA to where we're starting our trip on (where the AT crosses I-40). Mom's BF and his hiking friends were pushing too hard earlier this year and he hurt his leg in the process, and had to bail at that point by hobbling out to the road for an evac. This trip will be for him to make up the distance from where his friends had continued on without him.

My hike covered about three miles. The first half mile was rather steep and that trail was chosen for just that purpose. After climbing up to the ridge top, I went about 2 miles heading out about a mile (according to the trail markers) before turning around and heading back.  I then hiked back down again via another, not quite as steep trail. All told I was out there for about 2 hours, with a 28lb pack (basically everything I'll have on my trip, minus my food supply). It was a good microcosm of the trip, and there were no breaking clips or anything as happened on my first test run a month or so ago.

The 'granola' part of my weekend, lol.

Saturday night:

I came home, unloaded, showered, loaded up my toys, and met up with Murl, RTVoril and Kushial for dinner (celebrating RTVoril's birthday a little early), and then onto the FLGS where my dice said 'fuck you buddy'. There I spent a game vs. Kushial rolling a statistically impossible number of 1s and 2s all game. The only silver lining to that was in turns 2-4 the Doom of Malan'tai only killed 4 chaos cultists. I also acquired some Tau from RTVoril, plus he donated some more to the cause in starting up an army for my GF for her birthday (which is also a bit early, but I'll be backpacking when that rolls around, so now is as good a time as any).

This pic was from last week's defeat vs. Bob's Dark Angels, where at least the dice were cooperating with me...

Sunday:

More eve online in the morning (I don't watch TV, so eve has replaced that), and after lunch i went to my grandparents' house for the afternoon. I did paint a bit more on Elector Stoutfart, but not enough to warrant anymore photos at this point.

So there you have it, my weekend recap. I suppose that does qualify me as a 'Granola Geek' (despite the donuts). This evening, my GF is coming over and we're going on a dinner picnic followed (or possibly preceded) by either a short hike, or a short canoe trip out on one of the local lakes. We've yet to decide, but it'll be fun regardless I'm sure.

My Empire General's Griffin

o/

As you can see, I got my Empire General's Griffin painted this weekend, and its awesome!

Its got awesome stats: M-6 WS-6 BS-0 S-6 T-5 W-wait...what? 

What do ya mean that this isn't the right Griffin? 

General's got to be able to ride it? Well where in the hell does it say...uh...that...umm, oh. 

But, but...Stirland is an impoverished province...they can't afford a full sized Griffon...

Besides, its only a baby! It'll grow up to be big...someday. Right? That...uh, kinda shady looking guy from Tilea said so...and uh...what? Aww shit. He's wanted for fraud in HOW MANY provinces of the Empire??? 

...sigh...

lol, aside from starting the base coats on my last three swordsman, the general's pet griffin above is all that I got painted this past week (despite having several days off in a row). The combination of quite a few visiting relatives having come from several hundred miles away and (as they like to say in Eve online) having quite a bit of 'GF aggro' (which is the best kind of aggro) means that little time was available for painting.

There will at least be a game of 40k tonight as the GF is working late. So the gaming shall continue!  

(albeit at a reduced amount for the foreseeable future...)

Three blind...rats?

o/


Okay so they're not really blind, but it sounded catchier than 'some more random stuff'. Anyways I painted three Verminkin (or rather slaves) for the Clockwork Forage this week. This leaves me with just two left, after which my starting/prototype Mordheim warband will be completely painted before they even reach the table! Kinda feels like I'll be breaking one of the seven seals of the apocalypse...

...moving on.

Despite my best efforts, as well as those of eriochrome, I still hadn't figured out exactly how to scale my Blood Bowl passing template correctly, as my board is scaled slightly different than the official GW boards are. However while perusing a thread on the NAF forum the other day I found a PDF of the old BB reference sheet, which conveniently had this chart on it. With the ranges clearly being 3/3/4/3, it was a matter of a few simple adjustments, and my passing template is now to scale! Huzzah!


Speaking of Blood Bowl & the NAF, I received my new set of blocking dice recently (if you pay the $10 membership fee to join the NAF they send you a set). As you can see, they are green! The Wurtbastards were quite pleased and have taken this as a sign of Nuffle's favor.


...and onto one more random topic...

The photo at right shows yet another PvE fitted Jaguar that I have in EVE. Like the one I posted previously, there is an extra module mounted. However, instead of one of the guns, it is a salvager turret. Going into my fittings window I saw that the salvager was fitted into the first high slot. So apparently whatever gets mounted in that slot has an extra turret mounted on the ship, although it doesn't provide any actual benefit. So, mystery solved. :-)

Exodite Swooping Hawks

o/
Well as you can see, I finished assembling my Exodite bugs. Not sure if I just want to call them Swooping Hawks or something different. However given their bug like wings, I'm sure that they'll be labeled as 'Exodite bugs' when they get their entry in the updated Exodite field guide. Trying to recall what Sgt. Johnson called the little flying covenant when first encountered in Halo 2, 'little buggers' or something like that? My have to play trough that section again to see (assuming the ol' Xbox will cooperate).

Anyways, I have them divided into two units of five, with an Exarch in each. Both Exarchs will have Intercept & Sky Leap. One has a power sword and he other a sun rifle. I'll prime the three on the left squad, and leave the other squad as is to help differentiate them until all are painted. The addition of these two units brings my Exodite army up to the 1300 point mark. Not Sure what I want to add in for the next 200 pts. I'm thinking maybe a Siam-Hann Falcon so I can add in a Fire Dragon squad. I still have 10 DE chainmail skirt/leggings bits, so there will be at least one more guardian or possibly Dire Avenger unit in the Exodite's future as well.

Also just for the hell of it, here's a screen shot of my new favorite (if perplexing) toy in EVE online. It's a Minmatar Jaguar assault frigate. Its set up for PvE play. Which, in the rare case that any EVE players read this, they would be able to identify by the salvagers mounted on the end of the 'wings' (only one can be seen here). In EVE, a single turret mounted module (guns, salvagers, mining lasers, etc.) is displayed as a pair on the ship. Generally on opposite sides of the vessel so as to give the maximum possible coverage of fire. In space, combat isn't just on a horizontal plane (as opposed to any starship encounter in an episode of Star Trek). So it should look as though my Jag has 6 guns mounted (i.e.: 3 pairs ) however, while they can't all be seen in this image, the Jag actually shows 7 guns. WTF? You see that center mounted gun in the rear dorsal mount? I have yet to figure out why that's there, why it fires, and which actual gun's shooting that it represents. After flying well more than a dozen ship types, this is the first time that I've encountered an 'extra' mystery gun.

Ok, so maybe I should read the instructions....

o/

Well I got a new digital camera, a Canon A3000. It was kinda late last night, so I just pulled it out of the box, snapped a few photos, uploaded them to my computer and figured that was good enough.

Did I read the instructions? No.

Did I try to find the correct setting? No.

The result: Kinda grainy.

So I suppose I'll have to actually read the manual a bit to see what I'm doing wrong/not doing at all/etc.

Anyways here are a few shots...

An Aurora Scout, one of the few I have painted.


My new Demon prince-turned Greater Demon of Malal (which is why there are no wings).

Inquisitor Proust and two of his 'slaught troopers' (warriors w/hellguns). I have enough to do a full storm trooper squad and these boys (they're old VOR Rad Troopers) have obviously been inhaling too much in the way of drugs, thus their emaciated appearance & my justification for the 4+ save. After all, it doesn't hurt when you're high! The inquisitor is an old SM mini that was featured recently on the Gentleman's ones (well his mini, not mine), and posted for comparison purposes at B.Smoove's request.

Screen shot! (sorta) I'm still using a PC keyboard on my Mac mini, and as I don't have an apple key, I can't take screen shots. Anyways this is my cash cow in EVE online, its an asteroid mining ship classed as a 'Hulk' and named Lou Ferrigno. Asteroid mining in EVE is as much fun as watching paint dry, which is why i often paint minis while mining (so I really am watching paint dry). From past conversations via in-game local (solar system), corp (like a guild), and alliance channels, there are quite a few miners that are painting minis while mining in EVE.

Geek Multi-tasking FTW!

Anyways that's all I've got for this week. I'll be fielding my CSM army this weekend to try out the Greater Demon. By just arriving on the table top he'll be garnering a victory for Malal (by the way, if you don't know who Malal is, click here), as it'll kill an aspiring minion of one of Malal's rivals. Most of the army is unpainted still, and has once again raided the Imperial motor pool for rhinos & a predator. While I call my CSMs the 'Blood Eagles' the 'Scavengers' seems more appropriate...