Russellmania.com

Shuffling

03.09.2013

Today I've been moving board games around. I have a lot of board games and board game accessories. I got more for my birthday. Yesterday I picked up a new 6"x4" wireframe shelf to put in the bedroom closet to hold some of those games. In all actuality it's purpose is to hold the games that get played so infrequently that storing them in the bedroom closet won't be much of a big deal.

After 2 hours of screwing shelves together and moving games around, I'm done. I have a lot more free room in what has traditionally been my game closet. I have to make sure not to take that as a cue to go buy more games.

Part of the fun - I had to make some part of this fun - was trying to realistically pick out what would get played and what wouldn't. That's not to say that the "wouldn't" games will never get played. For those I'll either piddle around and figure out the rules myself, or maybe we'll get a wild hair to try something a lot different from what we normally play.

There were at least 3 games in the "wouldn't" pile that have been played before and have a real, real low chance of getting played again. I should try to sell those. I won't, because I hate selling stuff, but I should.

Now I'm going to take a break. Maybe watch some more of the 3rd season of Spartacus.

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Picture Playing

03.02.2013

I've been playing with graphics today. It's been a while since I just up and played. The first thing that I played around with until I got something that was "finished" was a new profile pic for my Facebook account.

I tend to put something goofy up for my profile pic, so the above worked out well. Most of the time I'm wearing the wrestling mask Brandon got for me on his trip to Mexico.

I was also playing around with a logo for the website I set up to host the Zombie Mall game and the plethora of games to follow. So far the name of the site will be Workshop Games (it's already changed twice before reaching a domain name, so who knows if I'll stick with this one). I had an epiphany Friday that the logo should have something to do with a workshop and dice, so I thought of a guy dressed kind of like a carpenter with a drill, and he would be drilling pips on a giant die.

The guy dressed like a carpenter never made it. Partly because I was doing this in Poser and I have no carpenter guys. I had the girl set up from an old game idea that never went anywhere, and she had the goggles that would fit a scene with some sparks so I just went from there.

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10 More Pounds

02.26.2013

So it's been 2 weeks since I mentioned my weight. Instead of reporting in every week with what could be a miniscule or awe-inspiring weight report, I decided to just pop in every 10 pounds. So the 1st 10 pounds took 1 week, the 2nd 10 pounds took 2 weeks. We'll see if the 3rd 10 pounds takes a month.

I've been sticking to my diet, mostly. I may have fudged on the carbs a couple of non-contiguous days. With the Phentarmine and paying attention to when my stomach says I'm hungry I generally eat 2 meals per day - lunch around 1:00 and dinner sometime between 5:00 and 8:00 depending on the day. If I'm not really hungry enough for dinner I just have a snack or some protein shakes (still drinking Muscle Milk, which isn't really low-carb friendly but I think the protein content is making up for it). I've also been sticking to my multivitamin and B12 every day. Part of why I skip breakfast may be the handful of pills I take in the morning, once you add in my blood pressure medicine and a couple of Aleve that helps keep my knees from hurting.

But progress. That's the key. The next step is to start back to at least a semi-regular exercise routine. I can walk from the parking lot at work to my desk without huffing, puffing, and thinking I'm about to pass out anymore. Dare I venture back to the treadmill at wellness center? More importantly, do I see if the bicycle tires can still hold air?

This could make for an exciting 10 pounds if I don't just sit around for a month.

But, to summarize:

Was: 437lbs.
Am: 417lbs.

Was: Having a hard time walking halfway in to work without stopping to catch my fat-ass full of breath.
Am: Successfully lugging my fat-ass all the way in to work without thinking I'm going to die.

Was: Actually kind of miserable, but I was trying to cover it up.
Am: Having a good day on average.

Permalink diet

I need to PRIORITIZE!

02.25.2013

I've reached another one of those points where I have too much to do, hobby-wise, at least if I sit down and try to do something without planning ahead of time. Here's what all I've got on my to-do list (which may be more of a "keeping me busy" list):

Zombie Mall - this part I need to break down a little.
- Rules update: I still have to get the rules ready for the next round of play testing. It was on my list of things to do over the weekend, but I decided to be lazy with Gina all weekend. It was then on my list of things to do today at work, where I expected it to be slow, but then I got busy tracking down database stuff. I just need to get this done so I can at least schedule the next test game.
- New modular map: I'm not releasing my free game to the general public with a 30"x40" map to print out. The goal was always to have a modular map, so now I just have to break up the map. It's not a simple cut & paste, as some of the dimensions have changed to make the map modular-friendly.
Unity 3D - it's been a long time since I played around with the old 3D game engine. It's time top get back to it. The bad part is that it's been long enough that I really need to start over from scratch with the tutorials I was working on. There are also a couple of bullets that fall beneath here.
- Poser/Models - There's still 1 program I have to get in order to import the vast library of Poser models I have into Unity. $60 I've been putting off spending for 2 years. I've slowly gotten back into playing around with Poser over the past couple of weeks.
- Unity 4 learning curve - Do I stick with the old version of Unity I have (if it will still install) or switch to the updated version? Any changes in the interface will have to be hunted down if I change, but the new version is supposed to automatically do some of that old, hard stuff for you. A qundry, that's what it is.
Painting & Modelling - I've got even more paper craft buildings to put together now. Gaming figures, too, as I've been looking at the Dust Warfare rules and they're starting to look good to me. Tangentially, I glued together the War Rocket Imperial space ships Jerry got me for Christmas. Next I need to fill in some cracks with green stuff before priming and painting.
The game after Zombie Mall - I started thinking about rules for a combat skirmish game about the same time I started working on the Zombie Mall rules. I've taken what I've learned from Zombie Mall and started the process of tweaking those original rules, which so far has meant throwing away 90% of what I had. The idea is still valid, so I still want to work on it and see if I can make 2 games that people would play!

All of it I want to do. I just get hung up on which to do first.

Permalink hobbies random

Checking Spam

02.18.2013

This morning I was checking my spam filter on my Yahoo email account (my default, go to email for most things) to see if a reply I was waiting on got filtered out. After scrolling past the hundred emails that arrive at 9:45 tonight, the above grouping caught my eye.

Hidden there amidst all of the porn, women that want me, penis aids, and international prescription drugs, the Christians were lurking. Christians wanting to hook up, granted, but not in the overt, in your face way as the rest of the spam. And for some reason, that made me chuckle.

Stick with any email account for 10 years and you'll get every type of email there is.