The Raz File

I did a little bit of work on my Orcs tonight; just starting on painting their weapons. I probably could have finished the weapons but I lost interest and set the figures aside while I watched some more Olympic coverage.

It looks like I'm going to take the job out at the military base. It will be at the lower pay rate, so I'll be taking a $0.62 per hour pay cut, but I'll be getting ten to twelve more hours per week and that should result in me pulling in about $600 extra per month. My current job will also keep me on part-time status with another 10-15 hours a week, so we should be able to save up some money for the arrival of the baby. I'm a bit nervous about changing jobs; my wife can attest to the fact that I don't take changes to my routine very well, but this should wind up being a good move for us.

Part of tonight's Olympic coverage was the Men's Team Gymnastics finals. The US took the Bronze medal which was apparently a lot better than they were expected to do. I didn't find the competition to be very exciting and the US team seemed a little bit cocky for how outmatched they were by the Chinese and Japanese teams. All of their soundbites made me less interested in seeing them do well. And what is with volleyball teams group-hugging each other after every point? It seems a little excessive to be hugging each other up to 25 times per set. The winning team for any match will have to hug each other a minimum of 75 times; more if they are beaten on one or two sets. It wastes time and it's annoying to watch. Swimming has become my favorite Olympic sport by a long shot at the moment. There seems to be more action than in the other sports that have been getting airtime recently. It doesn't hurt that the Americans are pulling in quite a few medals in the water.

Hobbytown has a copy of the upcoming Warhammer 40k: Assault on Black Reach starter set in the display case with all of the components laid out for looking at. There is definitely a lot of stuff on the sprues, and I'm pretty pumped up to hopefully snag one of the boxes.

I wasn't really planning on watching any of the Olympics, but today I got sucked in by the swimming events, especially the much-talked-about rivalry between the US and French teams in the Men's 400m relay. All of the videos of the race on Youtube are pretty fuzzy and jumpy, but it is definitely a race that you have to see. Here's a link to a site where you can watch the video in full quality. The French were heavily favored to win, and had done some trash-talking in the media beforehand. They led for most of the last lap, but Jason Lezak of the US team exploded at the end for a world-record split time and a gold medal for the Americans. They also broke the world record for the event by nearly four seconds.

I also did some planning for a couple of fairly even Flames of War forces. I don't have a copy of the rules yet, so I don't know how much special rules and gameplay affect things, but it seems like the German army gets a lot less kit for the points compared to the Americans. I planned out a Gepanzerte Panzergrenadierkompanie and an Armored Rifle Company each with some support elements. Both lists came out to around 975 points, but the Americans got a 4-vehicle Platoon of Shermans and a Tank Destroyer section while the Germans could only afford a 3-vehicle section of Panver IV H tanks once the minimum requirements for the Panzergrenadier company were met. It looks to be a moderately expensive project, so I'll probably collect the units piecemeal over the next several months while working on other projects.

Hobbytown has started a weekly game night up again and if this new job works out I may actually be able to go get some games in with my Skaven and hopefully in the not-to-distant future with my Orcs and Goblins.

I wish there weren't so many interesting projects to think about. My Skaven still aren't properly finished, I've barely started on Orcs and Goblins, I've got a grand total of five Space Marines painted, the Orks have all these new models as well as the awesome deal that is the new 40k starter set, and I've got the WWII bug again with locally available figures in shiny little boxes. That doesn't even take into account back-burner projects like the three full Mordheim warbands I have figures for, a couple handfuls of Foundry pirates, a whole passel of Lord of the Rings stuff I have or want to have, and unfinished forces for Reaper's Warlord and CAV systems. I don't have the money or time for even a quarter of that stuff.