The house inspection didn't go very well, as the dude found termites in the crawlspace and a cover-up of some shoddy stuff on the roof. On the outside the house looked really good, but in the hidden areas it was very bad. There are still a few houses left to look at, so we've got that going for us. It's a shame that house didn't work out, though. I guess it's better to spend a couple hundred dollars on the house inspection than to buy the house and spend tens of thousands trying to keep it standing.

The wife and the kid are in Georgia for the week visiting her family. That frees up a little time for me to try and get ahead on my schoolwork and do some hobby stuff. It also paves the way for me to die of malnutrition. I finished up the Klingon ship today. It looks okay. Or, it did look okay.

Shortly after this picture was taken and in the middle of typing this post, I dabbed the clearcoat onto the figure. All of the blue and green inks that were used for shading lifted off of the figure and ran down the sides. The shading was gone and I had some nifty green and blue swirls covering the surface of the ship. I wonder if spraying the clearcoat on would sidestep this problem? This is why I've got a jug of Simple Green. It just sucks to waste a couple of hours on painting something and have the stuff that's supposed to protect it ruin the thing. At least I was able to salvage the flight base. I really need to get the airbrush going. I suspect that being proficient with that would solve many of my issues. In the meantime I'm just going to repaint the Klingon ship using dark green and dark blue paint instead of inks. Paint pigments still run a little, but they tend to be more controllable and not as prone to migrate across the entire figure. At worst they will just feather a little around the edges.

Wizards of the Coast recently announced that they will no longer sell or allow their partners to sell digitial copies of their game materials as a measure to stop piracy. This also applies to PDF files that you have previously purchased from places like Paizo. So if you legitimately purchased a product through them you will no longer be able to access it legally. Interestingly enough, in a couple of days the only way to get a Wizards of the Coast PDF will be to obtain an illegal copy through piracy. And how will this affect their much-hyped online D & D utilities? Sounds like a bunch of bologna to me. As an aside, Paizo is offering 35% off most of their in-house PDF stuff as sort of a punch in the nose to Wizards. These are files that Paizo developed independently, so they won't be affected by the Wizards ban.

Wargames Foundry sends out customer information e-mails every couple of days highlighting their figures and whatnot. I usually don't pay them much mind, but today I got one announcing a Pirate Special! I'm a big fan of the Foundry Pirate range and have bought a couple handfuls of their figures on the second-hand market over the years. I read through the e-mail and clicked all of the links, but upon reaching their website all of the SPECIALS were the same price they have always been. There is no special. The Pirate Special is a non-event! Guess what! We are still selling the same figures at the same prices! No new sculpts! No special prices! No new assortments! We just want to let you know we still have the same pirates we had when you were in high school ten years ago and first discovered our company! I sent them an e-mail asking if I was missing something because from what I could tell the Pirate Special is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. I have some doubt that they will reply. I shouldn't be grouchy about it. I've been close to purchasing their Cutthroats Rampaging Mob probably fifteen or twenty times over the last four years, so having a special dangled in front of me that turned out to be anything but grinds my gears a bit. Good thing I've got this public forum to rant about it in.