Monster PC700

Blurring the thin line between geek-ness and nerd-dom, I bought a Monster PC700 power bar today. Not because my POS computer requires such lavish hyperbolic protection... But rather for reasons simpler than that: the price was right.

Simply put, I found it on the shelf at The Source (aka: Circuit City) at a ridiculous half-price. Yes, twenty-five bucks IS HALF-PRICE. If you're not in the know, that's because aside from setting the industry standard for mid-range home-theatre cabling, Monster is also dabbles in over-priced solutions for power protection. They have a whole line of this sort of stuff. Just walk into your local Futurecrap store and you'll find a really gimmicky demo station with what looks like an oscilloscope read-out that shows the stability of the electric current with and without a Monster product in it...

But aside from the questionable legitimacy of Monster's claims or the rationale a sales guy will try to give you for paying out the nose for a freaking power-bar, I will give Monster credit for some of their design choices. Besides making good solid cables, they do produce a pretty cool power-bar.

For their power bars, the plug is a handy round affair that is angled so it won't interfere with other plug you may want to have in the same 2-outlet wall-jack. The main toggle is positioned safely on top where an errant toe won't kick it accidentally (if you happen to be me at a certain LAN party). Plus, on the off chance you have a few plugs for devices which have their transformers built into the plugs making them fat, Monster also provides a few outlets with extra space around them too. Do you have one of those all-in-one FAX printers? Well, that's now protected too as there's a pass-thru for the phone line on this baby as well.

Monster products don't go on sale too often. In fact, they pretty much NEVER go on sale directly from Monster and usually it's the retailer taking a hit (I've been told in the past that Monster has very strict pricing policies on their products). So if you're in need of a power-bar to replace that crappy one you bought in the 80's, welcome to the 21th century.

Eldar Howling Banshees

Another photo sent over from my brother as he continues to revamp the paint job and add more special-character exarchs to his Eldar army. This time it's those babelicious Howling Banshees... Okay, really, I have no idea what I'm talking about - as usual my knowledge of these ladies is limited to what little I derive from Dawn of War: they're close combat units.

Anyway, on a side note, here's the assembled Crisis Suit I've had hanging over my head for the last week or so. The stand is finally more or less secured to the base.
I have already brought it down to my "base-coating station" (a big empty cardboard box in the basement) with a slip of scrap paper folded around the transparent base to keep it clear. The AI controlled Drones are not glued to their bases so they came right off for the spraying. Overall I'm quite happy with the way this whole thing has turned out.

Crisis Commander 2

Update: I have not been in the mood to do any work on this guy since Friday when i did some putty work. But one thing I played with a bit every day, was deciding how to mount the character onto his base (because his feet won't been enough surface to glue to the base).

Here's my ultimate solution:
I used a transparent "flight base" - this is a common stick that usually got onto a matching transparent base for models that are meant to appear to be flying or hovering. For my application, I had to cut the size right (becuase I still want the guy to appear standing on solid ground when I'm done). The standard flight heights didn't match the size of a Crisis Battle suit.

So cutting the shaft to the right height, I also had to carve down the edges to make it fit into the whole I drilled into the base. All this sounds like a commercial for my favourite tool, the Dremel, I know. But really, it's the secret weapon for any hobby enthusiast. I will mount using more putty to perfect the fit and then add glue to the feet once I confirm the position of the feet.

Game Night December 2007

This is a 2-for-1 post. First, last night we (my buddies and I) held a LAN party - and considering the nature of PC gaming (installing games, version compatibility, hardware setups), I'm amazed we had as few troubles as we did. Of course, it helped that we tried to stick with a game we all knew we could run: Unreal Tournament 2004... old enough that I acutally found a used copy at a local Value Village (aka: "Savers" in the USA).

Hi-lists and lo-lites:
- While figuring out how to plug in the various PCs that everyone bought, I accidentally kicked a power bar's toggle switch, killing the juice to both my PC and to Weirdguy's PC. We don't know if it's related, but for some reason we couldn't get his machine to stabilize afterwards - it would reboot itself for no apparent reason from time to time. And then after a while, it went back to normal.

- Once all 8 players were in place and all the PC's plugged in, the power went out. We didn't throw the main breaker because the hall light could be turned on. Heh.

- Only 1 out of 8 PC would refuse to connect to the others. We spent all night taking turns at the problematic machine trying to debug it while the other 7 would play. We never did figure it out.

- Took a break for a pizza supper. As anyone can guess, there was bound to be a round butting heads over toppings. I drank two cans of "energy drink" during the party... one Tab Energie and one Sobe Arush. I wouldn't fall asleep until about 4:30am!

- broke out the old SNES to play Super Bomber Man 2 by 2AM. It was also awesome. I complained that the game wasn't particularly realistic.

Now for PART 2...
I was just reading in Running Room Magazine an article about caffeine. For the longest time I've been wondering just how "extreme" are these so-called energy drinks. Well, Toronto nutritionist Tara Postnikoff reports that Health Canada recommend no more than 400mg of caffeine daily for an adult. And that an 8oz cup of coffee has about 150mg... so... wait, that would mean a typical 250ml can of Red Bull with 80mg of caffeine is about half a cup of coffee. Of course, that doesn't take into account all the sugars and other stimulants in an energy drink.

Anyway, beyond this, I've also decided that Tab Energie sucks. I mean, it does what it's advertised to do but it also tastes terrible, if you ask me. Firstly, I hate diet drinks - artificial sweeteners have this chemical aftertaste that remind me of cough syrup. Well, Tab Energie suffers on two counts:

First, it has a really really strong "diet" taste. And secondly, it's a cherry flavour drink. Whereas Red Bull and Arush taste more like cherry cola, Tab actually tastes like a cherry drink - like those Crush or Minute Maid fruit-flavour soft-drinks. But of course, a being a chemical-tasting cherry drink, it tastes more like bad coough syrup. I'll take an Arush over this any day.

To close up, however, can somebody out there tell me if this is the same "Tab" drink Americans have and we don't?

Crisis Commander Battlesuit 1

Remember that Crisis Battlesuit kit that arrived last night?
It's a pretty simple build: 3 pieces make up the torso, and a "ball joint" connects the limbs. And this being the ninth Crisis torso I've put together, I've learned an important trick: you need to keep the "backpack" parts squeezed together while the crazy glue dries. Here I've used an elastic band to tie the handle of my cutter together. The rubber grip provides a soft surface that won't damage the model.So far, there's not much decision making to do. But from here on, it's coming up with a "mock-up" pose. No glue yet, just fitting pieces together to get a rough idea what it might look like when done. I am substituting in "bitz" from a Commander Suit box I have leftover from another model.And finally... glue. And also, seeing as metal bitz have a tendency to not fit onto plastic well, I've used some model putty to fit the head on securely instead of glue.
The only thing not fixed at this point is the exact position of the feet and missile-pod on the upper left (his right). I've also made a terrible discovery at this point: the feet are spread too far apart for him to stand on the standard base. The base is important because it plays a role in the actual game (it delineates when a model is considered in close-combat with another model or not).
In my next post I will talk about modifying the base to accept a "flight" base stand to provide additional support to this thing. It'll take the better part of a day or two for the putty to cure anyway.