I just bought my new car.  I went to the company credit union with my boss and transfered the money to his account.  I’ll take posession of the new car tomorow afternoon!  With all my current car problems I am pleased.  (Even though it cleaned out my checking account!)

Went fencing last night, was checking the temperature gauge the whole time I drove over there and the whole time driving back home.  My little Honda oficially crossed 360,000 miles last night on the way home!  So I guess I shouldn’t really complain too much, as it has certainly been more reliable than I have had any right to expect.

I’m teaching an NRA Pistol class tomorrow morning, but plan on working on our next release in the evening.  Should be ready to publish early next week.  I have one more ready to go behind that (All the components ready, just needs layout and stuff) as well as two sketchbooks, and three “on deck” projects.  Enough to keep my busy!

Got the car fixed. cost me a bit more than I wanted but I made it to fencing last night and back home. Should be getting the new car this weekend also, which will be good.

Starting work on our next D7ACU and I just got back our latest Adventurer Essentials manuscript from the writer.

More updates soon.

So yesterday morning I am driving to work and the “Check Engine” light comes on about halfway there.  I then notice the car is idling very rough at stop-and-go speeds, and was worried that it might leave me stranded.  Fortunately I made it to work and there is a service station right next door.  They know me by name and I have all my work done there.  It’s one of the few places where I trust them when they tell me that X needs replacing or Y needs adjusting.  They have kept my car running far longer than I had thought possible.  (My little Honda has over 350,000 miles on it!  My dad got it new and worked as a courier so he racked up the miles before I bought it from him and put another hundred K on it.)

So they tell me my distributor cap was cracked, and needed replacing.  Fine, so a couple hundred bucks later I can pick my car up after work.  I walk over there and jump in the car so I can go to fencing class.  I am driving to class and I notice something doesn’t smell right, and then I notice the temerature gauge is getting really high, so I pull over about the time that steam starts pouring out from under the hood!  I pop the hood and see the hose from the radiator to the engine blew out and has a massive gash in it.  Coolant and sludge are all over the engine; which was causing the steam.  I call a buddy from work who fortunately lived a only a few miles away, and he came to pick me up.  We went to the auto parts place, got a new hose, some quick dinner and back to the car.  The hose was swapped out in five minites, and I was back on the road! (Or so I thought.)

I only got a couple miles down the road before the temerature guage started red-lining again.  I did manage to pull into a service station and park the car.  I filled out the service envelope and dropped my key to have them fix it, had my friend pick me up and I waited at his house while my wife came to get me in her car.  I didn’t get home until almost 11:30pm.  Missed fencing.  Missed Halo night.  I was sad.

The station called me this morning and recomended replacing the radiator.  Given the car has so many miles and I already dropped a couple hundred on it the day before, I am reluctant to spend another six hundred on it.  I asked the to flush the coolant system and check the flow.  I am hoping it is just sludge build-up that caused the problem.  But I still may end up replacing the radiator, depending on how the flush goes.

I had planned to post the cold Bringer last night, but was so tired when I got home I didn’t.  I’ll get it posted this afternoon.

Flash Flip Demo HERE.

 

 D7ACU:Cold Bringer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I finished the Cold Bringer D7ACU PDF last night and put together the Flash Flip Book Demo. I plan on recording the Publisher Audio Commentary tonight and posting it shortly thereafter. I am going to fencing class after work tonight, and we moved our regular weekly Halo nights to Tuesday’s so I have quite a full night planned!

Speaking of fencing, one thing I have noticed is that fencers seem to SUCK at web design! I mean here is the web site for the club I started going to, and another for a club near where I live, and one for the largest fencing school in the DC area, and here is the site for the Capital Division of the USFA! They all suck. Bad. Someone needs to show these guys WordPress or Joomla or Postnuke in a bad way! I mean, one goal of the sport has always been to attract new fencers, and in this day and age I think you need a visually appealing web presence to help with that. And with the above-mentioned applications it is even easier to achieve for non-Web Geeks. (I plan to offer my services to our club to re-vamp their site once I have been attending a bit longer, and they warm to my stunning personality!)

As a case in point this site is run on WordPress, which is a free PHP Blog engine that comes as part of my hosting package through GoDaddy.com. I used an off-the-shelf template and changed the center images to one with my company logo. In one fell swoop I have a site that looks like I know what I’m doing! (Shhhh…don’t tell anyone the truth!) I guess this advice applies to other publishers as well as it does to fencing clubs.

***UPDATE***

I know the above criticism sounded a bit harsh, and that really wasn’t my intention.  I understand that these clubs have no dedicated web gurus, and can’t afford to hire them.  I wasn’t saying they should be web-savvy or that they should spend a bunch of money to hire someone who is.  I really wanted to make the point that today (April 2007) it is so easy to create a website using a CMS like the ones I mentioned above, that if these places took a little time to set one up it would allow them to keep their sites up-to-date with relevant information and looking snazzy to boot!  (One site has competition results from 2004 prominently displayed!) Of course, the same can be said of publishers as well!

So Saturday I show up at the Fencing club and I was the only Foil fencer there; everyone else was doing Epee.  So I borrow a club Epee and fenced my first ever electric Epee bouts!  I actually won one bout against an older lady.  She was very smooth and steady, always made me do the attacking.  (Which isn’t usually a problem for me!)  I fenced a couple of other people, one of whom was “B” rated and I got three points on her.   I was pleased with how I did, considering how out-of-shape I am.

Started working on the Cold Bringer  D7ACU PDF.  I want to get that out tomorrow, since my latest release is about to drop off the front page of RPGNow.  I just finished some of my record keeping for the month of March.  I keep a spreadsheet with info on all our releases; when they came out, art and writer costs, how much they have earned, that kind of thing.  March was our biggest month so far (again, the GM sale really helped!) and has really raised the bar for April.  I strive to increase our sales each month over what we did the month before, so my work is cut out for me!

I got some more artwork back from Anthony over the weekend; more full-color goodness for one of our April releases.  I know I can also put together two or three more Sketchbooks with the artwork I already have.