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So today I was once again reminded why I don’t consider my self even a moderate republican despite the fact that I hold a lot of conservative views. The RPT held a session recently on who could have a booth and who couldn’t. The log Cabin Republicans (the homosexual republican sub group if you don’t know) petitioned for a booth again this year. It was brought up for discussion. Instead of listening to this guy:

The party instead sided with this:

Which, given all the jokes about liberals needing a safe space…I mean really? This is what I think of as “loving hate” and it’s not healthy. It show’s the actual hurtful face in my opinion because it’s the one that pretends to care but is clearly here to hurt a group of people subversively. At least with people like Matt Rinaldi I openly know where he stands and it’s adamantly against me, which gives me a place to start.

“Now Bobby,” you say, “We don’t ALL feel that way.” and that’s true. So I listened to more of the debate and then we came to this bit.

So I think it was quite clear that not allowing them to speak in the debate about them getting a booth is definitely not open minded. This IS what people like me see when this debate comes up. Thankfully the gentleman was there for the debate was well able to handle it and summed up my opinion on the debate well:

And he was right. It’s clearly what was said. Don’t beleive me? Let’s hear the vote!

I know people make the Reagan quote argument of “Bobby, you should join us because, as Reagan says, ‘The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.'” But I’m sorry that vote quite clearly says that being gay is 80% of what you think a conservative gay man would be. I mean if you won’t even take the gay people who hold ALL of your tenants except for being gay, what the hell would I do there? Because I don’t believe in everything on the RPT site. Far from it.

So the thing that gets me. Is R.A.M.P. gets a booth there. Which is against tenant 164. What is RAMP you say? Well that would be the Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition. So what the Republican Party of Texas just said is that drugs are less of an issue than gay people are. Congratulations.

And that my friends is why I’ll not be a Republican.

For the past several weeks I’ve been functioning at about half what I figure I should be able to.

All of my energy is being spent trying to be and appear normal at work.

Talking to friends and seeing them completely drains me of energy now. Which sucks. A lot. I went to see a close friends new house and after the initial panic attack of having to see someone I managed to spend a few hours there but was exhausted and near tears at the end of the night.

I have friends that are trying to talk to me and think that talking about this will somehow make things better. What it does instead is drive me to drink and cry and have panic attacks where I think I’m close to having an actual heart attack when I try to talk about things.

I know that this is how I feel: Cartoon about being an introvert. But this time it’s like I can’t seem to recover. I can’t ever make it back to feeling normal.

I have so much to do at work that I’m starting to feel like I can’t deliver on. I owe someone a resume I promised as well but don’t know what to put on it. I feel like all of my skills and knowledge are base level skills and not someone who has 22 years with linux, 10 in hosting, 5 in security, 7 with esxi, etc.

I had to drop out of a convention thing I really wanted to go to because I really didn’t feel like I’d be a good representative for the convention. I need to quit the con because I’m not doing it any good but handing the server off is scary to me because I don’t know what people will think of my setup AND I have to teach people how to maintain it.

I want to get back to streaming but Max doesn’t seem excited about any of it. I need to find someone who doesn’t drain me who is interested in helping with sound/lighting for the stream maybe so I’m not trying to play, keep max entertained, AND keep the stream functioning. I’m still not happy with how our apartment was re-arranged last year. It doesn’t really suit my needs. I’d worked so hard to get all the camera angles and lights in a functional place and now I can’t seem to get the energy to do it.

My pump it up has fallen into disrepair. It is so far behind on updates for stepmania i’m having troubles with the note skins now. I really want to upgrade to pump it up prime but don’t see the point now since prime 2 is due out in december and those games are not cheap (around $2,000 for board and game and I really need the newer board.)

I’ve been playing with ideas for my artemis/Empty Epsilon setup. I have 4 lights right now and I really want to make some small things for the weapons console to show the status of the torpedo tubes. But will power on that is low since I’m afraid to have people over to play it.

I’ve been thinking about getting rid of my board game collection. I kept imagining having large board game nights where a friends were over and playing games but I’m not social enough with the above issues right now. I feel like it’s a burden on Max to play games. He’s really into this farm simulator things so I let him play it most of the time.

I really hate that I don’t know what to say to my friends about what’s going on with me and that it’s so painful to try to talk about it. I know one in particular is probably getting really mad at me. Max offered to “take care of it” when I almost went into a crying fit because I didn’t know what to say. But I’m afraid he’ll somehow make it worse. I wonder if this is how people end up slowly going agoraphobic, lose their job and everything else. I really need to talk to my GP and see if they have something to take.

Bright things, I’m thinking of trying to print a 180mm tall atlas for battletech. Oh and I have a 3d printer that I’m enjoying a lot.

I fear work tomorrow.

I’ve been working on my Firestorm Armada stuff a lot recently.  I really need to play more but I definitely enjoy painting these miniatures.

 

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I’m having one of those nights where I feel stuck.

 

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We obviously can’t have the living room in the state it was in for the pump it up arrival.  So now we’re embarking on a weekend long reconstruction of our living space.

We’ll most likely never host a Furry Fiesta meeting of any large scale again but that’s OK.

For amusement here are pictures of our living room mid renovation. :p005 006 008 002

So I decided I wanted a necron Destroyer Lord in my army for Warhammer 40k.   I’ve decided I want mine to be a little different.  Here he is beside a normal destroyer.  I’m going to build up a base a bit like he’s running up a cliff to help with the height.

 

019

Necron Lord

 

Last week I found an add on craigslist for a pump it up machine in my price range.

 

 

so I bought it.

 

So far it’s been good.  I’ve had to move some sensors around since the player 1 upper-left arrow only had a single sensor on it and the upper-right was abnormally loud.

 

I plan to systematically clean out the years of spilt cokes over the next few weeks.  It will be slow going since I want it to be functional throughout.

 

For the moment at least I’m really enjoying it.  I’ve worn myself ragged.   I’m having to reteach myself how to jump and have to remind myself that I’m not as strong or young as I used to be.  I have every intention of fixing the strength part.

 

 

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This may turn into a bit of a rant so I’m going to try to divide this into four subjects.  Work, Personal Life, Hobbies,  Furry Fiesta.

Work:

I’m so tired of technical support.  It’s not something I enjoy and it’s not really what I want to do with my career.   My problem?  I’m really good at troubleshooting but my skill set doesn’t help move me to an administrative position.

My company is apparently utilizing my long term skill and vision for how support should work to help guide the redesign and deployment of the support department.    While I like the idea of this I’m not sure it’s fair to base the ideas on how to run a support group based on the skills, desire and knowledge of someone who doesn’t want to be doing that as a career.

They surprised me when they gave me a spot bonus to cover my medication after they found out that I haven’t been taking one of my medications due to how our insurance is structured.  I like the upper management but there is a very weak middle management at the moment which they’re working on.

The lower management is green and they’re trying.  I’ve been trying to use my influence and knowledge to let them know when there are issues that need to be addressed.   This is of course to my detriment because I have to recognize what is a truely important issue and what’s important to me.   Over all I think this company can succeed and I’d like to be a part of that.   But gods do I want out of support.

 

Hobbies:

Board gaming has relatively stopped and my electronics projects are on hold.  I really want to play more boardgames and have been thinking about inviting people over for a game night with all the tables setup so people can play multiple games at once.   I’m sure with the conference table and the folding table we could swing 3 games in that room.   I want a bigger apartment or house so bad. :(

Max and I were going to try to start a podcast geared towards people wanting to get into hosting with basics on how to deal with support and helping with proper ways to setup a simple server and such.   This hasn’t really gotten off the ground because we ran into trouble with format and such and recording wasn’t as simple as I’d hoped.

Warhammer 40k painting is going OK.   I do this more than anything at the moment.   I have zandrekh, a necron lord and a few troops completed and a lot of unpainted/half painted models I’m working on.    Currently I’m working on a squad of space marines who are metallic blue.   I should have them done before my vacation is over.   I’m hoping Max will be able to get a force at least playable because I really want to play the game.   I know he’s frustrated that I want to play the game while he just wants to paint minis.   I’d hoped we’d be able to paint and work together on things but it seems I’m more into this hobby than he turned out to be.  Which is sad.

I have created my army list here.  I own a decent chunk of it but it will take me a while to manage this.

My diorama plan is partially built but I haven’t dedicated time to complete it.  I have several species up there already but no shadow box and haven’t grabbed the dragons yet.   I have 140 some odd models coming from reaper in may so I’m hoping to use some of those.

 

Furry Fiesta:

I tried to quit.  I need attention right now and a lot of it.   I told them that I didn’t think my work with Furry Fiesta would ever result in the recognition I wanted….  So I’m not vice chair.   Figure that one out. :p  We’re 3 months out and I have a LOT of loose ends to tie up now.

 

Personal Life:

Things are OK I guess.  I have to decide in the next little bit if we’re staying in our current apartment or moving.  We keep moving down into smaller units with the intention of saving money to buy a house and all that’s happening is we’re moving to smaller units.   I’m very frustrated right now.

My arcades are in storage, Our living room is dominated by a table so I can’t buy a kinect like I want.  Max wants to stop paying for the storage unit and buy a storage house out on his parent’s land.   I don’t like this idea because I’m afraid they’re just going to get filled with dust, and eventually a leak will destroy them or cause them to rust out and I’ll be heartbroken.  If that happens I’m afraid I’d blame Max and it would start me down a spiral of resent…  The arcades mean a HUGE amount to me even if I don’t get to use them.  They’re really all I have left from when I was in Lubbock or with Shelly.  They represent nearly a decade of my life.   I’m thinking about just going through the soul crushing idea of getting rid of them.  If I don’t have them then they can’t get destroyed in a shed…

I’ve been dealing with a lot of feelings lately.  I’m feeling very out of sorts again.   It’s not really a midlife crisis.  Just dissatisfied when it comes to how I feel about some people and what I want.  As with all problems of this type the other people have a laundry list of problems of their own to deal with so dealing with me should be at the bottom of their list.

My health isn’t getting any better.   I need to find a new doctor.  I’d hoped Max would find us a new family doctor,  I asked him to, but instead he’s decided to keep going to the same office we went to previously.   So now I’m kind of put out and back to square zero.   I’ll figure it out soon I’m sure.

I generally avoid political talk unless it’s light banter.

Today I’ve been reading up on a lot of my facebook and lj friends and I’ve found that I’m actually deeply hurt and saddened by what has gone on.

First, Chic-Fil-A has every right to say what they want just as I have every right to not purchase their product.  Which at this point I have no intention of.

If you’ve known me very long at all you know that I have a tendency to adamantly support people’s freedom to exercise their religion.  I’ll back you 100% up to the point that you start to butt up against someone else’s freedom to exercise their beliefs.  In those cases I always suggest you both smile, look the other way and go about your business.  This will work for 99% of all religious conflicts you’re likely to encounter in America as long as everyone allows everyone else their own private beliefs.

While I like that they have that freedom and that both pro and anti-gay advocates all have the freedom to express their views, I am hurt by several people and what they’ve had to say to me directly.  They’ve told me that *I* was persecuting them and their beliefs because I want to marry Chris.  My marriage would be between him and me and no one else.  The worst it will ever do to any of you I know would be that you get an invitation to an event that I’ve long wanted have and to have my government recognize it.  If anything by lobbying your congress to prevent me from doing something that has no real affect on you, it should be me who feels persecuted.   Sadly, being open and out about loving a man for so many years, this week, this action and appearance of outright vitriol from some people I considered colleagues and friends.  For the first time I actually feel like I know true hatred.  I’ve felt that hopeless pang that people want to hate me for something that doesn’t involve them.  It’s hard for me to understand.

As a lot of you may or may not know, I have a very fluid belief system when it comes to religion.  I’ve read the bible, parts of the Qu’ran, parts of the Torah, the gnostic scriptures, the writings of the Dalai Lama, even some books on paganism and I’ve found truths that I like in all of them and things I didn’t.  I feel this has helped me find a path in my life that allows for relative happiness and the ability to support others in their quest for finding their path or lack of path in the case of some people who choose no faith.

I know I’m not a particularly nice person sometimes.  I know I’m not the best person or even right as much as I’d like.  But I try to be good and I try to respect your beliefs as I’d wish you’d support me in mine.  You know that I’m not particularly flamboyant, but I have no shame in loving Chris.  You know that I try to help  you where I can in both your personal and professional careers.

So I want to know from those of you who know me and have openly said such things to me this week.  Setting aside the bible thumping because there are people who do that, settings aside whether you feel chic-fil-a got a beat down on their rights.  Just looking at the interactions you and I have had, what have *I* ever directly done to you that makes you want to actively seek out and rip one of my life’s goals away from me?

Nemesor Zandrekh from the front.

 

 

The body is essentially painted except for the washes and the sealer.  I’m not super happy with my colors up close but he actually looks good from a distance.  I still need to paint one part of the staff and do some touch up and He’ll be complete.   I wish I had a better eye for color.  It would make this so much easier.