Welcome.
Geoff has finished all the Federated Commonwealth and Free Worlds League edits, and is currently finishing the last Lyran Alliance and Comstar ‘Mech writeups. I am shipping them off to the proofers (that’s Jeff ‘Happy’ Kamper, among others) for their particular attention. Jeff has also been hard at work. For example, he found an error in warload placement in the writeup for the Anvil. It was a serious goof on my part, and has been speedily corrected. The writeup and the image now match. Good catch, Jeff!
Eric has come through again! His Anvil and Vulcan II are quite impressive and are worthy additions to the lineup. Ice cream cones for everyone! Furthermore, I got a wild hair and as a result, Eric is attempting the impossible – making an attractive JagerMech. Hey. I know it is not in our lineup, but I just could not resist seeing if this incredibly skilled artist could tackle something which has thus far eluded us all – an illustration of the JM7-F with its twin rotary autocannons which will not provoke seizures in the viewer.
Looks like he did it....
Karl Olson has finished the Panzer IX and it looks damned good. Payment is on Friday.
Bing! has finally listed this blog at the top of searches for ‘TRO:3063’, beating out that darned Mike Sullivan’s deviantArt page. Hooray! (Sorry, Mike. But Google still loves you).
I am going to shake up the music box a bit with some new tunes, so keep an ear out. One group which has been neglected is the Dandy Warhols. I hear one of their tunes (‘Bohemian Like You’) every so often on the local radio stations, but there is another which will get your head bobbing as well.
Yes. That is a PayPal donation button over there on the right. It is intended for the new art. You have to admit that the art is well worth it. Click on it and chuck me a fiver if the mood strikes you. I will dump it in JP’s (and other artists) account as soon as it reaches $30. Otherwise, don’t worry. I am not going to ‘monetize’ this website.
Just finished reading a couple of books by Daniel Gallery. For those of you who don’t recognize the name, he captured the U-505 in WWII and it now sits outside the Chicago Museum of History and Industry. He also started the Navy Steel Band – some of you might recall that band, very unique, disbanded for some reason in 1979. They played steel drums. Dan also wrote ten books; some were thrillers, some were accounts of his wartime experiences, and some were really funny stories centered around a Bosun’s Mate First Class name ‘Fatso’ Gioninni. I have seen one of them in my father’s library, entitled “Now, Hear This!”. I found it again, going for $35 on Amazon.com.
I lucked out and found four of Gallery’s paperback books, including another ‘Fatso’ work called “Cap’n Fatso”. They were hiding in an antique store and I got them for a buck each. There are others out there, and I will eventually get them all, because they illustrate a Navy and a time long gone when I first enlisted (1981). My father told me once that in his day (1958-1978), big ships had First Class Messes as well as a Chief’s Mess. On his particular ship, the Bonhomme Richard (CV-31), they actually controlled sales of all the cigarettes on the ship! Talk about power.
Gallery was an interesting fellow, the moreso because his political views mirror my own. He said that he was for whatever political party that was currently out of office. As soon as they were in power, he began voting for the other side, under the theory that both major parties were rife with rascals and should not be allowed to serve more than a single term in office lest they get comfortable and begin sliding further into corruption.
Moreover, he was proud of the servicemen who were over in Vietnam and lauded their bravery – but in the same paragraph, said that he personally felt the war over there was a complete waste of time and lives, as it was an attempt to shove our own political system down the throats of people who simply did not give a damn about it.
As near as I can tell, not much has changed in forty five years.
Thanks for stopping in.
Steve
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