The Raz File

Today I went down to the DMV and got my motorcycle endorsement. So now I can ride home from work at night legally, which is always a good thing. The guy who processed my paperwork at the DMV did everything in such a slow and deliberate manner that I think he does it on purpose to annoy customers. The little half-smirk he had on his face lends my theory some credence. There was a customer there who kept trying to jump the line. When you go into the DMV you take a number and they call up the numbers in order, so it's generally pretty obvious when it's your turn. She jumped up every time a number was called and went to the open counter only to get sent back when the real number-holder got there. It was pretty entertaining to watch. I'm having more fun riding the bike now that I have a few days out on the public streets. I still get nervous because people really don't see motorcycles. There's an intersection on the way to work with a Yield sign that most idiots treat as a merge sign, rolling straight through into the lane without looking left. They couldn't see me in my truck, and with the bike it's ten times worse. Every couple days I have to swing wide left and gas it a little to avoid getting creamed. Still working on riding one-handed so I can shake my fist or make rude gestures. I manage to do the motorcyclist wave when passing oncoming bikes, but I think shaking my fist might cause the bike to become unstable. And speaking of driving/riding like a moron, here's a little video out of Australia that is pretty hilarious.



My big fantasy baseball trade (I traded away Jimmy Rollins and Nick Markakis for Jhonny Peralta and Vladimir Guerrero) has started working out the way I envisioned. The players I got have had a smoking couple of days, so I'm up on the trade by 7 runs, 3 home runs, 5 RBIs. The guy I traded with has only got one or two stolen bases out of the players I gave him and batting averages are extremely close for both sides. I am worried that giving him Nick Markakis could have been a bad move as he's been pretty hot, but I didn't really have any other outfielders that he would bite on. I think the trend will continue and hopefully the changes I made to my pitching rotation will pay off and put me back in contention in that league. My head-to-head teams are slowly dropping in the standings, as my teams started out very hot and have cooled down since the All-Star break. I should still make the playoffs, but it's going to be a tough post-season for me.

As for Fantasy Football I somehow managed to schedule my first draft for drill weekend and so the software auto-drafted my team. Mot of my picks turned out pretty well, but my receiving corps is pretty weak. My running backs aren't exactly the ones that I would've chosen either, mostly due to durability issues. I'm looking at a starting lineup of:

QB - Tom Brady
WR - Torry Holt
WR - Marvin Harrison
WR - Chris Chambers
RB - Frank Gore
RB - Brandon Jacobs
TE - Jason Witten
K - Stephen Gostkowski
DEF - Minnesota Vikings

It's a decent team with top-ranked players at the QB, TE, K, and DEF spots but the potential for injury and/or struggles at the WR and RB spots mean I'll probably be playing the waivers a lot to keep the team competitive. I suppose that's about enough about Fantasy Sports for now.

On the miniature wargaming front I am still doing a lot more thinking about projects and making very little progress toward actually completing any of them. There are so many different armies and warbands that I'd like to plan/purchase/prep/paint but when the time comes to actually get started I find that I have very little motivation. I saw some photos today on the Grimsby Wargaming blog of a game featuring hundreds (if not over 1000) figures on the table. The historical period doesn't interest me much but the idea of massed lead and plastic (plastic may be considered heresy among the Grimsby group but I tend to prefer plastic figures) is quite titillating to those of the wargamer persuasion, although it is a rare gamer who actually has a large force painted for any of his periods and genres of interest.

I don't have much to talk about, but I can't sleep for some reason and I'm pretty tired of looking at my Fantasy Baseball rosters today. I've already made all the changes I can without imploding my teams, so there's no point in comparing stats yet again.

I didn't get any painting done today as Saturday is usually the day the wife and I run around and do all our errands together. Of course, running errands usually involves visiting one or two motorcycle shops to look at bikes. We saw a couple of cool vintage bikes today. That was pretty fun. And the wife asked me if I thought we'd let our kid get a little 50cc dirtbike when he gets older. I'm looking forward to taking my motorcycle class next weekend, as my bike is mostly just a fancy driveway ornament until then. I am still sticking to my stance that I won't ride it until then. One of the guys in my National Guard unit is a military motorcycle safety instructor and several of the other guys ride, and they all thought I had a good plan to wait until I had the course under my belt before riding a bike this big. Anyway, I'm looking forward to doing more than sitting on the bike in my driveway making vroom sounds.

Today I looked around at all the figures and books and magazines I've got stashed everywhere in the house and I think it's about time to go through and find everything; then get it organized again. I really don't even know what all I have anymore hobbywise, so that's probably a good sign that I need to reorganize. I'd like to make some progress on the Orcs I'm painting this week as well as get some form of primer on the rest of the 1000-point list. We'll see how it goes.

Also, on nights when I don't have a movie to watch I've been listening to podcasts. The one I've been listening to most is The D6 Generation, which seems to focus more on Warhammer/Warhammer 40k and the Privateer Press games. They do reference board games and a little bit of historical stuff, but not much. Another one I've listened to a couple of episodes of is Podhammer, which focuses entirely on Warhammer Fantasy. There are a couple of others I've been meaning to check out, but haven't got around to. We also discovered a new webcomic. It plays off the premise of the DM of the Rings webcomic, using screenshots from the Lord of the Rings movies to explore what would happen if someone tried to roleplay The Lord of the Rings with players who had never heard of Tolkien. This one is called Darths & Droids and is set in the Star Wars universe. It even comes up with a much better explanation for the existence of Jar Jar Binks than anything George Lucas could cobble together.

We didn't do much this weekend, a conscious decision on our part. We took the dogs to the river for a little while and Annie chased a stick in the water while Buddy sniffed the shoreline. On Saturday I washed and waxed my motorcycle. My youngest sister and her husband had a few fireworks for our niece to watch, so we did that with them.

My oldest sister and her husband stopped by to borrow something and I took the opportunity to force them to look at my motorcycle. I still haven't ridden it; I think I'll probably wait until the end of the month when I've taken my safety and riding course. It sucks to wait, but I already made the beginner mistake of buying a literbike instead of something reasonable in the 250-500cc range. I probably shouldn't make another one by jumping on the beast and trying to teach myself how to ride it.

Today we had church and gave Buddy a bath. He's had some eye and ear problems so we've been applying various ointments and attempting to get him feeling well. So far it's working quite well. His eyes haven't been nearly as goopy as they used to be and his ears don't seem to be hurting him anymore.

I tried out the gesso primer on the crews of my Snotling Pump Wagon and Goblin Spear Chukka. I'm not very impressed with it. It fills in too many details and anywhere that has recessed details has a good chance of forming big cracks as the gesso tightens around it. I could try thinning it some more, but that supposedly weakens the polymer bonds and makes it practically useless as primer. I'll have to do some more reading. I'll probably wind up dumping this lot of figures in some Simple Green and try to find another priming solution. At least I was smart enough to try it on a small sample of figures this time.

I may finally be done with World of Warcraft for good. It hasn't been much fun for a while now, although I still persisted in playing it out of habit. I thought maybe joining that guild would be a good way to spark myself into enjoying the game more but my odd hours and antisocial nature kept me from really interacting with any of them, and on the few occasions that I joined up with them to play I found myself frustrated and making excuses to log off. I'm just not a very social animal. Anyway, that's $15/month I can put toward my truck and motorcycle.

I didn't get any work done on my Orcs and Goblins tonight, possibly because I didn't feel like watching a movie. I think I'll probably go to bed (relatively) early rather than work on any figures. I've been having trouble getting my Savage Orc Shaman to fit into the Savage Orc unit. It's a common problem I have with character models in my armies. My Skaven Warlord only fits in his unit of Stormvermin facing to the rear, and I had to trim the Army Standard Bearer's tail so he could rank up with the other Skaven. The character models in Warhammer just seem to take up a lot of space outside the confines of their bases. I'm thinking about removing the Skaven characters from their current bases and placing them on elevated terrain bases so they can be easily located and rank up properly. I may wind up doing the same with my Orc and Goblin characters.

Here's another bike they had at the shop that is absolutely mean-looking. Try not to get goosebumps while watching the movie. There's another video on the BMW motorcycles site

The other day I went to the Cycle Gear shop to look at helmets and jackets. I didn't really find anything I liked, but there is a Yamaha dealership next door and I figured I'd go and look at bikes since I still had a few minutes before work. I hadn't really ever stopped at that place before, as Yamaha doesn't really make starter bikes and their sportbikes are way out of my price range. But, as I was perusing the used bike selection I saw a 2004 Yamaha FZ1 with only 2800 miles on the odometer priced right around what a new Buell Blast would cost. I wasn't planning on buying a bike until next month as I don't even have my license and technically can't ride it yet, but I went home and looked at insurance rates and bike reviews and decided at least go in and see if a deal could be made. Long story short, I bought the bike and they threw in a free helmet and some gloves. The picture isn't very good, but here it is:

It's a pretty crazy bike. It's so big and powerful (140 Horsepower!) that I am actually kind of nervous to ride it, so I'll probably wait until I've finished my STAR safety course, which is an entire month away.

I haven't got a lot more done on my Orcs and Goblins. I generally work on figures while watching a movie, and I haven't watched any movies in the last couple of days.