Sounds about right...

My Story In Vehicles

My first car was a gift from my dad. He graduated in 1966 and shortly before his 21st High School reunion (they forgot to have the 20th) he found some guy selling a 1966 Pontiac Tempest for $300. My dad bought it for one night and gave it to me, but not before rubbing off most of the hood's paint by trying to hand wax it. That car died when I accidentally crossed over a road set about 3 feet lower than the road I was on. I broke two motor mounts and bent the other two, slamming the engine into the radiator. Would cost more to fix than it was worth.
My next POS was a 1980ish Dodge Omni in less-than-heterosexual Green. It was the only car I could afford without getting my parents to co-sign on a loan. I was relatively rebelious at the time, so when they tried to ground me from it I laughed and asked how they intended to keep me from it since I was paying for all of it myself.....those were the days. This car died on the day I went to college. It ended up being the first model year they tried to put in a "computer". I was able to nurse it along with way too much money in parts until I just gave up. It rested ion the family's junkyard for a couple of years until my Grandmother sold it. She tried to give me my cut, but I literally wrote it off.
My next car was government issued since I had enlisted. A good, old fashion HMMWV with a GRC206 mounted inside.
I did buy a buddy's lowered 1974 VW Beetle. He didn't know what was wrong with it and the repairs would cost anywhere from $20 to $1500 (based on some basic troubleshooting). $700 later and I had a working bug, but the drop job was somewhat crappy so I offloaded it and moved up.
A co-worker bought two mid-80's Chevy Malibus from his future father-in-law. He kept the 350 and let me have the 305 for $800. It was a boat, but a smooth ride that would just fly if you opened up the 4 barrels. I had this car for 8 months or so until I PCSed to Germany. I took it on one sweet ride cross-country (getting paid for the travel) and sold it to my mother for $800 so she could give it to my little brother.
In Germany I had a HMMWV and a M113. I needed the track since I was now assigned to an armor unit.
I did eventually get what we affectionately called a "hooptie". Just a cheap car you could toss when done. My Audi lasted for about a year before I put her in the junkyard. When she died the car had the nasty habit of jerking hard to the right when driving below 100 KPH.
I needed a new ride and I wanted one with a little bit of style. I found myself a Mini Red Hot Special Edition. This is the first car I truely loved. Unfortunately I was an idiot and decided that after Bosnia and making SSGt I had the money for a "real car". I sold it just before I came back to the US for about $300. I actually sold it for $3000, but got totally stiffed on the deal. Since I sold it on the economy and was in the US, not much I could do...except have the idiot beat up by my comrades still in Schweinfurt.

My "real car" was a 1997 Chevy Cavalier Z24. That car was nice and fast on the autobahn. Unfortuneatly the limiting chip would cut in at 107 MPH. I had this car for several years and only lost it when I took it in for maintenance and an unscrupulous Goodyear mechanic didn't do what I paid $1K for. After a major engine tuneup I complained immediately that the engine sounded funny and before I could take it back it through a rod. They tried to tell me that the manager test-drove it 10 miles before I picked it up, but after a review of the paperwork (a month later) I noticed that they had the same inbound and outbound mileage. I totally should have taken them to court. In the end I donated the car to the friend of my neighbor who had a good engine and needed a cavalier body.

When I was stationed in Texas I fell in love with the Toyota FJ40. Problem was that they were hard to find and gawd-aweful expensive, so I set my sights on a Postal Jeep (DJ5). I bought one "clipped" DJ5 from Houston and another sight-unseen in Fort Sill, OK. A buddy helped me pick them up. Unfortunately for me they were different models (the Ft Sill one was supossed to be the same model). I dismantled what I could and had the good body stripped and the bad one tossed. Most of the assembly got done, but then I got out of the service. The jeep made the trip up with me and has been languishing in the garage ever since. Someday.....

I found an August 1966 VW Beetle for sale and picked it up for $1500. It's the first month they made the Beetle in 12V. I've worked on it some, but I don't have the time anymore, so it'll be sold soon.
I think there is some karma going on with me giving the Z24 away because I won a scooter in an Octoberfest raffle. I drove it for a year and it needs to be cleaned up and sold because fo my current ride.

My boss got a Honda Accord for a friend and ended up getting the car back, so we now have an office car which I get to drive.

Iron Man Movie

Saw this last night....hot damn it was a good movie. A couple of minor details didn't seem right (I like to pick on military stuff), but nothing of the caliber of Transformers.

GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!

Little update

Well, I've gotten some more figs from Devinnight over at Four Ugly Monsters. That earlier rant from when I found out he was selling the custom figs I had ordered previously....well he offerred to make amends by giving me four new custom tokens. I got two new tokens for my PCs and two more generic PF tokens. It took a while to get the new tokens, but they were worth the wait. The man simply does good work. He was pretty cool in giving me the Pixie Fairy tokens not only in their proper size, but in larger/medium size so I could use them as Elvarels if I wanted to. He blurred the wings so they look like they are fluttering. Pretty cool. This guy here is my Gnome Troubleshooter Klemwinkle Cairngrin. I'm not a big fan of the facial hair, but that's such a minor thing.


We've been playing pretty solidly on Tuesday nights, using MapTool. I think most of the group is on the East Coast so what is a 7 PM game for me is 9 PM for them. Needless to say I think the lateness of the game has been the primary factor for when we can't get together. We're based out of a city at the moment and probably averaging 5th level. I'm almost suprised we're that high of a level, but we have been playing for over a year now.

In our current mission I was asked by my guild to take care of a competing guild. It seems these guys are pretty much a thieve's guild, but it looks more like a bunch of bandits that are trying to profiteer (maybe even start a war) in a local regional conflict. They've also been harrassing the Gnomes in the Gnomish Quarter. Being a Troubleshooter, my Gnomish Thief isn't a very traditional theif, but they had me at "harrassing". The group was real cool about being willing to help out, even though there isn't any pay in it. I've been shouldering all costs in this operation, as a matter of Honor, but I'm sure we'll get some good looting to make up for our troubles.

We had three days to get things done and the first day was lost just finishing up normal stuff we had already going on. We started out on the second night and ran into some trouble, but we got a bit more information and I was able to come up with a decent, but slightly complicated plan. Part of the problem was that we don't know the size of our enemy, but we did know that they had some roving guards, guard dogs, and a fenced compound. We found a relatively remote portion of the fence that was near a third story window. I was able to get in a scout around a bit and thankfully was able to get out safe. There might have been a bit of meta-gaming going on because I could see the guard dog and handler on the map, but in character (IC) I knew I couldn't delay because that duo had been spotted earlier.

When we pulled back that night I sketched out the following plan to get our group inside the enemy warehouse:

• We would retreat back to the Glittering Gem (inn) to resupply with some essential gear (climbing harness, climbing daggers, climbing/knotted ropes, weaponblack, catstink, and a bag of cats)
• Duting the day individuals from the party (but not Klemwinkle because he was a Gnome) would mosey over to the compund and spread some catstink along the fence on that side of the compund we wished to enter. Hoepfully the guard dogs going "crazy" throughout the day would keep the handlers from wanting to check out that side of the building. The handlers were the weak spot of the pair....and this might last for only one night at best.
• Our Cleric would memorize a continual darkness and silence spell if possible.
• Klemwinke would hop the fence and scale the side of the building using his climbing harness and climbing daggers. Once at the window he would check it for traps and lower a climbing rope.
• After the area had been silenced, the group would scale the fence and climb up the rope, using the climbing daggers as footholds as needed. The half-ogre would be last and standing by with the bagged cats. If he sees the guards he'll toss some cats on the inside of the fence.
• After everyone is inside, Klemwinkle will climb back down the building and remove his climbing daggers and rope to make it as unobvious as possible anyone had climbed up the building.

Hopefully this would put us inside the compound and well away from the array of traps and guards set-up to repel an entry from the main doors. In my next post I'll have to relay how it's going so far. Every plan has it's "hick-ups"

Triumphant Return to Vegas!

Carolyn and I had to go back to Las Vegas so we could attend a conference. Our partner for our big October conference is slowly getting into the business of hosting conferences and we worked out a deal where we are a co-sponsor of their other events. Since we are co-sponsoring the event, we should be attending. The Boss had another conference he had to attend, so I got the pleasure. This was the first time Carolyn and I had been back to Vegas since we got married 5 1/2 years ago.

We flew out last Sunday and when we switched planes in Denver I looked out the window and noticed that out plane was missing a bunch of paint from above the cockpit windows. That kind of torqued me a bit since the last time I went down to SoCal I had an unscheduled delay that cost me a Friday night....because some idiot put a scratch in the cargo bay door and we couldn't leave until it had been painted. This was also a United flight so it made me wonder about their standards.

Anyway we got to Vegas safe and sound and the first thing I noticed was that the city had changed so much in 5 years. The last several times we'd been to Vegas the Hertz rental car place was just down the street a couple of blocks. This time we had to take a shuttle to a special car rental center (not just for Hertz). Also, and much more dramatic, was teh fact we couldn't really see the strip. So many huge hotels have spring up alongside the strip that the strip itself (the old strip at least) wasn't visible from a distance.

We got to our hotel....stayed at the Renaissance instead of the Palms (where the conference was being held) and had super-expensive room service. Do I have to pay $4.80 for a small 10 oz bottle of Coke?

The next few days we worked our booth at the Conference. Spent most of our days chatting with the other exhibitors and talking to other interventionists and people I knew from the industry. I had a lot of help talking to people about our programs, which made my life much more enjoyable. My body just forgot how hard it is to stand for hours on end. I've gotten too used to flying a desk so between being on my feet and the cigarette smoke (The Palms was terrible) I felt like crap most of the time.

We really didn't have the time, energy, or inclination to go and try to see some shows or do anything special. We did a very small amount of gambling. Overall I gambled $30, winning $10 and a $10 limited edition Silver token from the Palms. I had to talk Carolyn to even giving the slots a go, giving her $1 to play on the penny slots. She won $2.20 and promptly cashed out. Can't say I blame her.

We did have a great dinner on the first night. We got invited to a dinner held by Silver Hill Hospital. It was a small initmate dinner for about 20 people. I got to meet anothe rinterventionist that works out of Boise. Nice guy, hope he stops by for a visit soon.

On the last night we left a little early (but not until well after the official tear-down time for the exhibitors) and went out to dinner at the HoffBrau House, a German Beergarden. We had Jagerschnitzel and SaurBrauten.....and I finally had some Kartoffelpuffen. Without even realizing it (may have been teh liter I had) I did some polite stammering in German, but it was apparant that either the hall was too loud and/or the waitstaff knew absolutely no German. Like I cared...the food was outstanding. On the way out we got some t-shirts and a Spaetzle maker.