Tadd Mencer

Posts Tagged ‘All That Jazz’

One of the only things I did over the week (other than baby things, errands and helping take care of the wife) is a bit of work on my soldier guy. Aidan and I added a few things to the fray such as a breather and a tube – which very much adds a Steam Punk vibe. I did some work on the chest plate, though I’m not that excited about it. Feels too generic, so I may redo it again. For the 10th time. Literally.

Modeled it Silo
Rendered in Blender

I need to redo the gloves because they got screwy for some reason. But that’s easy enough to do.

If anyone has any good tutorials that aren’t uber-basics please let me know. I have the "The Creature Factory" and "The ManCandy FAQ" but those are beyond me at this point. I need more just above basics. I don’t need to know how to split the viewports and such. I need more how to do the extrudes and all that jazz.

14-16 hours in the car total, 4 state borders (Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York) and barely any sleep will adequately describe my weekend.

We decided to visit my grandmother, who is terminal with cancers (many many cancers). She will probably be with the Lord within a month if that so we felt it would be wise to take this opportunity to go see her before it is too late. Both for her sake and my own.

So we packed up the Taurus on Friday and headed on out. It was a fairly uneventful trip and really it was nice to see family. My grandmother did not look like my grandmother and slept the entire time we were in the room. She’s in one of those … places. Not a hospital, not a retirement home. Elderly are put there basically to die I believe.

My family is taking it extremely well. Joking and laughing and such … it was both refreshing and oddly disturbing to me. I’m sure it’s my own stigma about death that made it disturbing … respecting those who are passing and all that jazz. However, they seemed happy to see me and I was happy to see them.

On my way home a movie quote came to mind.

“Death is only the beginning.” Imhotep – The Mummy

I have fond memories of my grandmother. She enjoyed painting and I have some art of hers. She was also a tough old bird and regaled stories about the old days such as duct taping a severed finger rather than going to the hospital … yes, true story.

I’ll miss her much and I wish I could have told her that I love her … but she slept. I hope she will know that we came out to see her.

The ‘WordPress weekly digest 4th – 9th March 2008‘ shows that it is possible (if not probable) that WordPress can expect another delay for their 2.5 release. No doubt this will throw people in yet another comment frenzy about ‘oh how unprofessional’ and junk about all the ‘hype’ and so on.

I’m not looking forward to see all that jazz. Really, as Peter Westwood stated, “It’s done when it’s done”

I hope that people remember how much they’re paying for WordPress. $0. And if they ARE paying for WordPress … well they don’t deserve to complain.

Really, why complain about an update? It’s not like your site will crash, burn and become an episode of Tellitubbies just because you can’t update to the newest and shiniest edition. My rule of thumb, “If it’s ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

I was reading some articles on MSNBC about how a shooter entered a mega-church, shot some people (which is very sad) and was gunned down by armed security – in a church. You can read some articles here:
Unarmed worshiper confronted church shooter
Churches beef up security

Now, I’m a Christian, avid church goer and all that jazz – but it makes me really sad that churches are being forced (for security) to have people in their congregation with weapons, badges and so on to protect the congregation. Does this make anyone else sick?

I guess the words of Christ in Matthew 24:9 ring true, “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” Obviously the context is different because it talks about being put to death, probably from a government or a ruling power – but the idea is the same. You’ll be hated and killed because of what you believe. Whether it be Christian or Muslim or Jewish … you can (and will be) killed because you believe what others don’t.
It’s still hard to believe that this happens – and is happening.