funny thing - memory

Two weeks ago, when we were doing the stones and dirt D3 was a great help on the Friday. We moved about half of the dirt and a bit of the stones using shovels and a bucket.

On the Saturday, we had borrowed my dad’s wheelbarrow but he didn’t want to help as much so I let him mow the lawn instead. When he tired of that I put him back to work on the piles while I mowed the front lawn. He was sullen but I told that him that “when I think back on this day, I’ll remember us all as being happy and singing.” He wasn’t impressed with that. When Shan repeated it to him he threw his hat down and said, “I don’t want you to remember me as being happy” to which Shan replied, “but you were, you were so happy that you threw your hat up in the air.”

He was not impressed. But at least he did keep helping.

New pump

Yep. Had to swap pumps. It was a bit of an odd conversion as the hoses on the new pump are much smaller than the old one. That said, we were able to get 2 solid hours of salt to chlorine flow out of it with no flow problems. So that should take care of that - for now.

None of this stops the kids from going in the pool already. Even the 289 degree K water temperature (16 C) doesn't faze them.

low flow woes

I’ve been having trouble with the salt chlorinator for the pool. Or to be more precise, with the filter pump having too low a flow for the salt chlorinator. I’ve cleaned it out a few times and it works fine for a bit but ultimately it starts beeping at me. When it does work I get a nice stream of bubbles coming from it.

I might just end up having to change it out for a new pump to see if that helps. I'm working on it again tonight so we'll see.

'New' Codex syndrome?

It may be the ‘new’ codex syndrome – having just read their codices, but the Tau look like they would be fun to paint and play. I like the look of the Kroot and the Crisis suits seem interesting. I’m not going to rush out and get them but they remain on my ‘interested’ list.

I read the Eye of Terror last week. The Space Wolves 13th Company looks like fun as well. How could you not like werewolf marines?

The Necrons also caught my interest back when they came out. Since the only Warhammer army I could field is my Undead one, I like the idea of undead in space – either in Terminator metal or ceramic white.

The Demonhunters book looks good too. A small dynamic force of figures to paint – inquisition, grey knights, demonhosts. It looks like fun. Again, not sure how it would actually play though – so on to my ‘interested’ list.

While these codices aren’t ‘new’ as such, they are new to me. I have seen the figs and had lots of time to mull them over already. Should I find time (and funding) I will probably pick up a few of them.

Lost - I want my six years back

We've been watching Lost since the first season when they crashed on the island. We watched the finale. We watched the extra preshow, and even watched the Jimmy Kimmel Live afterwards.

We knew that they couldn’t wrap up all the questions they had created in a final two hours – since they hadn’t really answered most of them all season.
But to have what I consider a bad, St Elsewhere snowglobe / Dallas dream-in-a-shower ending was bad writing. Especially since the writers had already come out early in season 1 or 2 and said that the characters were not dead already.

Some people said the island was them trying to change and when they did they could die and move on. We would be willing to believe that – but then Sawyer had redeemed himself a few times – jumping out of the helicopter, time with Julia, etc and was still around. The writers just didn’t want to get rid of the character.

And if all the island stuff was real – how do you explain the smoke, the light, Richard not aging, Darma, etc? I’m still leaning towards bad writing.

See I think they had the idea have the characters die and move on but when it took off, then they realized that they had to pad out the stories. That’s why they kept introducing new characters – the tailies, the others, Darma, the islanders.
They knew 2 years ago that they had two years to wrap it up. This is what they did instead.

The writers always said ‘if we give away the secret it will ruin the story’. To me, that sounds like bad writing – if your story hinges on a secret twist, and can’t be enjoyed by knowing that twist, then it’s not that good a story. See Identity – you can figure out the twist in the opening credits if you pay attention. If not, they tell you 2/3s of the way in. Knowing either way doesn’t affect the story.
Memento had a twist – but the story itself is compelling even placed in proper order.
Watching The Village knowing when it takes place doesn’t affect the story.

Would people have watched Lost knowing all the characters were already dead – doubtful. If the characters were not already dead, then there are too many unexplained events about the island to make sense – and that have not been resolved.

We knew we were in trouble when they showed the recap show at the beginning of the season to bring those others up to speed for the final season, and then they didn’t even mention Michael or Walt, any of the Tailies, or Russo.
All of which were huge points during the seasons they were in.

So.
Not.
Impressed.

Long Weekend - recap

The pool was filled, the filter hooked up, and salt added. We are switching from chlorine to salt this year and set up the connection.

No fire but barbequing done.

We saw friends at Keycon, visited the dealers’ room – I was the only one who managed to not buy anything.

We also managed to watch a lot of TV. We cleared up a bit of space on the PVR and maintained it over the weekend.

I didn’t do any work on the figures but did manage to read through most of the codices I had won.

It was a nice relaxing weekend. It felt very much like being on a holiday.

May Long Weekend

It’s the long weekend up here. So far we have some plans but not too many. We’ve already started the yardwork – including spreading two yards of dirt and three yards of gravel. We’ve cleaned and set up the pool and have started filling it. We plan to pop into Keycon on Saturday to visit the dealers’ room and touch base with some friends. Depending on weather (which is forecasting rainy right now), we’ll barbeque and maybe have a fire.

Mostly we’ll try to catch up on our TV. We are hitting the buffer on our PVR and need to clean up a bit. Luckily, a lot of the shows are finishing their season.
I’m going to make a solid effort to either base those western figures to finish them, read the codices I got recently, or do some more work on the 40K models I’ve picked up.

Ideally, it should be a relaxing, but fruitful weekend. Hope yours is equally well.