Posted 2:47 AM by Tim
Its been quite a while since the last post again. Sorry about that.

Just got finished running a tourney this weekend. 10AM till Midnight. Then cleanup and home. Home to a nephew (visiting the grandparents) who's caught the flu bug from his sister. So, I'm up at 3AM blogging while I wait to see if he's gonna get up for another vomit-run, or finally manage to sleep.

Anyway, happier thoughts. The tourney info. Way back in November, I bought a case of cards for the store. This, combined with a few other expense items put the total cashflow of the store into the negatives. About $525 down I think. Since then, I've been tracking expenses more rigorously than I had been before. Trying to keep track of how long it's taken the store to dig itself out of debt and start being profitable. As of today, the store is now under $10 in capitol debt.

The store has been making money over time. More so since I've gotten the case of cards. I've been able to run draft, which brings in some cash. I've added events to the regular Midland tourneys, and have been running tourneys in KW on a regular basis for the last 5 months too.

I've had feedback here and there, and there's ways to improve the tourneys to make them better, and draw out more people. I'm going to have to see what I can do to improve. I'm willing to try new things, and see how it works out.

Its not an easy job running a tourney. There's a lot going on. We had a total of 20 people show today, at different points in the events, not to mention the occasional parent, friend, and hangers-on that showed as well. Since we have the Midland tourney in a library, keeping the volume down and controlled during the daylight portion isn't always the easiest job either. I wish I could get 20 people to the KW tourney. That would mean some serious prize support there.

I suppose I should explain. See, the Midland tourney has mostly newer players in the player pool. That means that they're much more willing to try new and odd strategies, and that they're far more open to a range of cards beign given out as prizes. So, I charge them a nominal $3 to play. This sets the entry point low, but still leaves me with a reasonable profit point. I can usually afford to give away $20 in prizes there, because I know that I can count on 8 to 12 players. That translates to $4 to $16 in profits, which are re-invested in prizes for the next tourney. Basically, the more people that show, the better the prizes get.

Now, the KW tourney is different. They are mostly older players, with a much more competative bent. They'd never show up if the entry point was $3. Not worth their time to bother even playing. I've tried giving out cards as prizes, but the minimum value of card for them to even consider is around $20. That means that I've got to come up with about $40 of prizes to give away, just to draw in a small crowd. To make any kind of profit off of 8 (the average KW attendance) people, I've got to charge at least $6. I've been charging $10, and just giving away cash. I'm looking at cards again though, since I've been told that people would really prefer that.

If I can mange to hold on to any cash from today's tourney, I might be able to get another box of cards (Dark Steel if you're interested in knowing), and also possibly grab a decent card for first prize at the next KW game.

Posted 6:34 AM by Tim
It hasn't been easy to get blog updates in lately. I know, I've been saying that for months. But its all true. See, my internet is acting up again. Something somewhere along the line is causing problems for my system. I can't even pin it down. It could be viral. Something blocking communications with the outside world - or at least Microsoft related sites. Maybe its hardware? But there's more than one system here suffering from it, so I'm thinking that it can't be something in the computers themselves.

That leaves me with the possibility that our cable net sucks, or that the router has gone funny like the last one. Either way, its not pleasant.

So, work's got me in days right now. Gah. So sleepy. I'm up very early, and back home while its still daylight. That's just strange to me now. I mean, if you spend a few months working a certain shift, changes tend to cause problems. Next week I'm on nights though, which I imagine will be even worse for me. I'm not sure how I'll manage it.

Hopefully we can get this internet thing fixed up. That'd be good.

Posted 6:22 PM by Tim
Wow, two updates in a week.

Classes have been going pretty well. I'm there now. We're learning!

I've been pressed for time this week to get things done. Not much for chainmail, writing or exercise. I focused on course work, and the painting. got all the minis in the Dark Eldar army done up now. Well, they're all black anyway. I've got one or two still in the deadpool, but they will not be there for too much longer. I may get at them tonight, or possibly tomorrow. The goal with them now, is to put some colours on them. I've got a new purple, so that should go a long way towards making them look good. I'll start with the vehicles (because they're very noticable on the field), and then work on squads.

I've got about 120 warriors and over 25 wyches to paint. That's a lot (and that's not counting the sundry troops that I have as well). I'll be breaking them down into squads of 5 or 10, and painting them up all at once. Squads of 10 should take me less time to do than if I started in on them in huge blocks.

For the first time in a while, I've been seriously thinking about the purchase of new miniatures. I've been on a buying ban for a while now, because of the number of things that need painting. Now that I'm making progress, I'm starting to feel the itch to expand the army into new areas. I'm still holding out though.

In a related vein, I've been taking a long hard look at Necromunda. I've looked at it before, but never seriously. First, almost nobody plays it, though it's pretty close to 40K. Second, minis aren't the easiest to get, even though they're cheaper to buy than a similar force of 40K. For someone like me, there's a lot of opportunity for conversions too. Very customizable.

For those not in the know, Necromunda is basically squad-based battles. Each player has a gang of people, armed with various guns and weapons. They run around shooting each other up, and basically causing havoc. Each mini is treated seperately by the game rules, and things that happen to that mini in one game can affect that mini in later games. There's history and recordkeeping. Things that I like in campaign styled-games. The number of rules are pretty daunting, but I like that also.

Whole gangs might be as few as 3 miniatures, or many miniatures, with no real upper limit. Initially, you're not going to end up putting a lot of cash into miniatures. That's good. Budget armies are always good to have.

I've been looking at 2 houses for making gangs. House Escher and House Delaque. Escher is a female based group, while Delaque are all cool looking guys with trenchcoats and sunglasses. I've also been looking at Redemptionists, which are basically religious zealots. The best plan for the interim is to use minis I have already, and just call them the other guys. That saves me even more cash until I figure out if I like the way the game runs. I just need to convince a few other people to play.

Well, back to classes now. Maybe more on the Necromunda stuff later.

Posted 2:49 PM by Tim
The blog is not dead!

Its been busy this week, and much of last week. I've been trying to focus on the projects that need doing, and that's been taking a lot of my time. Maybe I should have put blogging down as one of the things that I need to do?

I've just finished off Project #2 for the ASP course I've enrolled in, and it seems to be going pretty well. I've got a fair grasp of the subject, even though I've yet to read a chapter in the book. Standard studying practice for me, it would seem. I think I've got an exam coming up too, so I should be reading something soon. Take the book to work with me.

The chainmail is coming along at a slowish pace. I picked up 2 spool of 16 gauge galvanized steel too. I need to try winding some of it before too long. BTW, a spool of 16 gauge is a quarter mile. 1320 feet of wire. I don't think I'll run out of that any time soon. :P

In other news, I actually did some editing on the CyberWarriors novel yesterday. I've been meaning to get to it every day this week, but the course work today means that I don't have time to get at it. I'll have to do some tomorrow.

It's not a great relevation, but the process I'm using seems to be working so far. Work a little bit each day (or every other day or so) on the projects that have very long completion times. This means that they get some progress all the time, and the total remaining time to completion gets lower. Pretty basic math, eh? The hard part is keeping at it. Doing some every day that I can. An hour of chainmail a day. A page of editing, a row of the blanket. Combine that with other projects that can be done quickly, or in chunks, and get them out of the way fast.

I'm looking at getting one of the armies completely primed. I think I've got about 10 figures in the Dark Eldar that are still needing primer, and I'm happy to do that... as soon as I get a little time for it. After that, I start on the purple coloration, then probably Boltgun, or green. Before too long, the whole thing should be completely painted. That's the goal anyway.

So much to do, so little time for it all. Chip away at it, a little every day. The progress is slow, but steady.

Posted 10:42 AM by Tim
Been meaning to write in here this week. Had a bit of a job this week. Way back in August, I had a short term job scanning documents. I was back at it this week. They needed to work through a backlog of documents. No problem. I can do that.

I get into work and they show me the backlog stack. A foot tall stack. Literally. Alright, maybe this is going to take some time. I scan for 8 hours. That is, I sort some of the pile into scan groups, then scan each group, then stamp them to mark that they've been scanned. That's "scanning." I get 1700+ documents done, based on their systems counter. The pile, is noticably smaller, but there was still some left downstairs. I go home, and come back the next day.

The next day, the backlog pile is pretty short from where it was yesterday. I can easily scan the remainder tonight. The boss says to me, "they didn't tell me where the rest of the stuff was yesterday." I'm thinking "the rest???" He points me to another foot tall stack of papers. I scan the first bit, then bring up the next pile. The second pile is easier, all one type, and the papers are only 2 sizes. I manage to scan 2225 documents. There's still a good pile of papers left. I've worked 16.5 hours by this point, and have scanned nearly 4000 documents, and there's still at least a thousand left. I go home, and come back the next day.

I get right into the pile of leftovers and finish them off by 8:00. I start at 6:00PM, so that's pretty quick. There's now only the job of sorting the papers I've scanned and filing them. I'm glad that I don't have to do that.

In other news, the tourney this weekend went pretty well. I tried using my DCI software, which worked wonderfully, and also the store database I've been working on, which drove me crazy. I've got to figure out how to make simpler database tables. Entry of a single sale had to be processed as many as 6 times, and often 3 or 4. That's a lot of work for a single database to do. Easy for an application to do it, but not so for a human trying to make multiple sales in a short window of time. I've got to get it sorted out.

Also, the layoff continues. Another week of no work. Not looking good for the rent prospects.