18 December 2006

Kris Kinder Update

Kris Kinder was a success! I sold quite a bit of armour and such, and talked with a bunch of people. In some ways K. K. is one of my favorite events. I have a relatively comfy place to sit, while everybody I know wanders by to talk to me. Also I get to spend the day talking about armour. On the other hand, being outgoing all day really wears me out. I am always exhausted for a couple days afterword.

In other news,
Anne is finishing her semester this week. Her giant paper is due later today, along with most of her grading. I helped her stay up really late last night finishing the grading. It was a little miserable, but actually pretty fun. I haven't stayed up all night working on something in a really long time. Though I realize this morning why I don't just stay up all night for fun. It kind of hurts the next day.

07 December 2006

Pictures as promised





Here we go, only a little late.

I'll have more early next week, and hopefully a full rundown on how Kris Kinder went.

06 December 2006

The point of this weblog

Wow. It's been a long time since I posted. There is not much interesting going on these days.
I have found a new online comic. It's called "questionable content" Funny Funny stuff.
Also, as per the original purpose of this weblog, I have some new armour to show off.
I don't have any new pictures, but I plan to bring some home with me today, and take pictures!
Woo!
I'll post them tonight if you're lucky!

Other than getting ready for Kris Kinder, I have nothing interesting going on in my life.
Anne is crazy writing papers, I'm crazy working on armour.
In a couple weeks, our lives will go from crazy busy to boring.
Then I still won't have much to say.

13 November 2006

New Churburg book!

I got my new Churburg book today!
I got my new Churburg book today!
It came via fedex about 15 min. ago!
OMG it's great! OMG IT'S GREAT!

WOO!

07 November 2006

Diane Rehm Show!

My email was read on the Diane Rehm Show!
Now all 29 other fans of NPR know and can share in my pain!
You can listen to it here.
Over all, it's not just all that exciting, but I emailed her with more or less the text of my last post.
Very Exciting!
Woo!

I'm mad as hell!

There were some problems at my polling place. Everyone in the Gardenside subdivision (a heavily democratic area) within St. Louis city has their name in the same book, so my Anne and I had to wait an hour in line while the four other lines in the polling place had no lines at all. The line was nearly twice as long when we left at 8:00am than it had been an hour earlier.

In talking with my 50 new friends in the line, I found out that no-one or nearly no-one in the Garden district had recieved voter registration cards, sample ballots, or indeed any information at all from the board.

The poll workers were also asking for photo ID. I don't know if that really matters, since nobody had voter ID cards anyway.

The line snaking it's way all the way around the room had the effect of Not providing any privacy for folks voting.

Was this a plot to supress Democratic votes? I'm not sure.
On the other hand, I'm not sure it wasn't. It sure smells funny.

02 November 2006

Feminism?

Hurumph.
Feminists make me grumpy. (feminists in general, not friends who happen to also be feminists)
I am in favor of equal rights, for men and women (pretty much everybody, really)
In fact, I am very firmly and strongly in favor of equal rights and fair treatment for everybody. But as far as I can tell, Feminsm is not about equal rights or fair treatment. It's about "girls are great because boys are so stinky" and about some weird sort of turning the tables to objectify/belittle men. That I'm not in favor of. Any more than I'm in favor of belittleing women.
It seems to me that if something is out of balance in the way people are treated, the answer is not to swing everything too far the other direction, but to balance it.
Also, there really are biological differences between men and women. I heard a feminist writer decrying the inherent unfairness of annual pap smears for women, but not men. men just can't get cervical cancer. Try as you might, it just won't happen.

To be perfectly clear -- I am in favor of equal treatment for everybody. Health plans that cover Viagra, but not Mamograms? That's not right, and I'm against it.

Maybe I'm wrong about feminism in general, and only extremists make me grumpy.

(extremists DO in fact make me grumpy)

01 November 2006

Armour of the month update


Well, the AOTM results are in, and I made a good showing, but the bascinet won. It was well deserved. Here's a picture.


Isn't that nice thing?







TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: I did not make this. Jeff Wasson did. It's really really nice. I have included it here because I am very impreessed.

26 October 2006

Flickr!

To compensate for my not posting much lately, I'm posting twice in one day!
Roar!!!
So, I like Flickr! I liked it so much I started an account. my Flickr account is here
You can see many cool pictures that I am too lazy to post on my blog.

Here you can see pictures from my friend Laminator_X. He's very cool, and a much much better photographer than I am. Well, he's a very good photographer, and I have a camera.

I hope that I manage to keep up on the whole Flickr thing, it could easily become a big catalogue of armour I have made that anybody can look at. That would be pretty great. I might have to start doing some photo editing to mark my photos, though. That would be a pain in the butt, and sort of sad. So I'm not going to start now, I think.



I'm Brian Romine and I approve this message.

Here it's election season, I couldn't resist.

Armour of the Month

I entered the Armour Archive “Armour of the month” contest in October!




The piece I entered was the 1050 legs that I made for Duke Garrick.


I'm in the five finalists, but I'm not going to win.
I'm okay with that. You can see the finalists here

The bascinet that is going to win should, It is the nicest piece in the contest. You don't see reproductions of that visor very often.


This has been fun. I think I may enter again.


Roar!!!

13 October 2006

Timeline

I watched the movie "Timeline" this week. It was not as bad as I thought it would be.

In fact, possibly for the first time ever in the whole world, I thought it was better than the book. Not because it was good. It was only 90 min. long, so it didn't have time to annoy me with the stupidness that the book was so full of.
Chriton was a good author once, the Andromeda Strain, Congo, the first Jurassic Park movie -- All good. His new stuff is mostly crap.

Some of the armour in the timeline movie was really good. Some, eh, not so much.

05 October 2006

My adventure this morning

On the way to the gym this morning, I passed a guy talking on his cell phone. He was saying "I'm gonna shoot me a fucking nigger this morning" I stopped and I was trying to decide wether I could smash his head into the side of the Coronado building before he got a good look at me, but Anne grabbed my arm and pulled me off.
Probably for the best. My plan would have ended in tears.
besides, I'm a delicate blossom.

On the up side, I'm pretty grateful to Mr. Turd. I had about the best weight lifting session I have had in years.



Then I went to the heat treating company, and met with my contact guy. I think I'm going to start outsourcing my heat treating.

03 October 2006

Anne

My wife, Anne, is great.
She's everything I could ever hope for in a best friend or companion.
That's all I have to say. Mostly, I'm pretty boring.

21 September 2006

The new Dr. Who series

I recently got the new Dr. Who series, and Anne and I have been watching it.

Oh. My. God. Is it good.

It's really really good.

I never had much respect for the Daleks before. Any major villan that can be defeated by a stair is not worthy of too much respect.
There are some Daleks in the new series. They're damn scary.

Woo! New Dr. Who!

20 September 2006

Buffing!

I finally (yesterday) Got my whole buffing operation in order!
There is still not enough electricity, so I can't use the Kiln, and I can't use the Mig welder, but I have an O/A torch, so it has caused me to practice my gas welding. I've gotten okay at that, but I really need to get my mig welder working.
But, I can do a lot now that I have the buffer going!
Yay!

Last weekend

Giant Tower!
This was very cool from down on the path.















Anne and I went to Laumeier Sculpture Park. It was pretty cool.
(http://www.laumeier.com/)
I've got some pictures.















These are Naval bouys, and they are about 4' tall. These giant steel balls dont' seem like they would float, but I guess they do.

14 September 2006

Promised pictures from the Japanese festival

Better late than never, eh?
Seriously, I didn't get very good pictures from the festival, but it was a good time.
Here are some fish windsocks, and some drummers doing the Japanese drumming thing.

12 September 2006

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday!
What have I done so far?
I got to sleep in some. I thought I might take it easy today, it being both my birthday, and raining (I don't' have the shop fully organized yet, so I don't have a good place to put some things except outside)
I lifted weights this morning, that was nice. A different crowd at 8:30 than we usually see an hour earlier.
I got my license renewed. Not very fun, but I'm glad to have it done. It finally has the right address, and no longer has my SSN. You really shouldn't have your SSN on your driver's license.
Now, finally, I don't.
I also talked to my sister. That was nice, I don't talk to her enough.
I did some important research. The effigy of Colaccio Beccadelli (1341) was very interesting. His gauntlets are very like the conjectural gauntlets that Tristram made, 14th century gauntlets with leather cuffs!

I don't really have any special plans, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me, except that everybody asks what special thing I'm doing, and I have to say nothing. My sister thinks I should do something fabulous. Huh.

Brian

05 September 2006

Not too much exciting going on.

I've got the shop set up, (mostly) and I've begun working on actual armour. The electricity situation is still unresolved, which I'm not very happy about, but I think I'll manage to work something out with that.

This weekend was the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Garden. That was pretty cool. We're pretty close to the garden, but I was surprised when people were parking on our street to go to the festival! Hopefully soon I will have some pictures to upload.

That's about it.
Ho-Hum.

23 August 2006

Wow, It has been a long time since I posted.

It has been a long time since I posted.
Much has happenend. We sold our house, we moved to St. Louis, and... Well, that's a lot!

The business is located in a garage in Maplewood, MO thanks entirely to Laminator X, and Now I have all my tools there, all it needs is more electricity, and I should be set up and ready to make some armour! I can hardly imagine how cool that will be.

Due to my change in ISPs St. Eligius Armoury will have a new website.
http://brirom.freehostia.com/
Hopefully this will be good. I've been working on re-vamping the whole site, and updating some picures.

I have found a really good website of pictures somebody took at a museum.
http://public.fotki.com/chance1234/5ylac_general/5ylac_armoury-1/5ylac_armoury_--2/
I wish that I knew what museum this was, but I have not as yet seen anything about it.

In other news, I like our apartment in St. Louis, and I like the plethora of markets around here. There seems to be fruit and vegatables for really good prices all around here.

I guess that's all for now. Hopefully I will manage to update this thing sooner than I did last time.
Brian

30 June 2006

My letter to Mr. Bush

The United States tortures prisoners. They drown them. They hurt them with dogs. They kill them. They threaten to hurt, drown, kill, etc. CHILDREN.
Sure, Terrorists hurt children, too.
Once, citizens of the US could take some comfort in the fact that they WERE NOT terrorists.
They were on the side of good. The good guys.

I've got news.

The good guys don't hurt Children.


I live in the US. I'm not very patriotic, but I decided that I had to do something.
Not much, but I sent a letter to Mr. Bush.

I've included a copy of it here.


Dear Mr. President,
I have been shocked and alarmed to hear the news lately. Once The United States was a bastion of freedom. It was the land of liberty and Justice. The people of my country could feel that they were on the side of good.

Now we torture people. We threaten to harm children.

These acts make no better than barbarians. If you are 10% as moral as you claim to be, you will take some action immediately.

I am ashamed to be a citizen of the United States of America.

Brian Romine



You know what? I AM ashamed to be a citizen of the US, if that's the best we can do.

27 June 2006

We sold our house.

We sold our house.
It was on the market for three weeks, and now we have a contract. Closing will be on July 14. We're moving out on July 9. Wow. That's soon. I'm off to go make some armour here in a few minutes. Not a lot to say, but quality over quantity. :)

Brian

21 June 2006

Gauntlet Pictures!





















I finally uploaded my pictures, so here's some pictures of the gauntlet I finished last week.
I sent it to my father for his birthday and father's day. He has been very excited about hourglass gauntlets, and now has one of his own.
He is really happy about it.

13 June 2006

Back to work!

I have enough time to go make some armour this week!
Yay!
It has been a while with packing and getting the house ready to sell and everything.
I forgot how much I like making armour.
Hopfully I'll have pictures soon.

05 June 2006

Busy!


We have been very busy, but we finally managed to take a bit of a break yesterday.

The weekend before Last weekend (Memorial day Wkend) Anne and I went to St. Louis looking for an apartment. We used Rent.com and the Apartment Guide. We armed ourselves with a map and many appointments. What did we find? crraap. The apartments we saw were all in giant complexes, run down, and little, and expensive. On sunday Laufersweiler and Wendy helped us look. We left equipped with only a general idea of the areas we might like. we found hundreds of phone numbers. No offices were open since it was Memorial Day weekend, but we resolved to return again, this time bearing many more appointments.

We returned to St. Louis on Friday (Anne's immediate boss being about the coolest boss ever) and saw many more apartments. They were on averege about 200 square feet bigger, much nicer, much cooler, and ~$100/mo. cheaper. Most importantly, it was the putative landlord who did the showing instead of some office flunky. That seems good.

"So, what", you ask, is the upshot? We put in an application, and a security deposit on a 1br, 5 room apartment in a four family building in the "Southwest garden" neighborhood. then we went out with Anne's brother, Mark, for celabratory Chinese buffet.

We were so pleased with our progress, that on Sunday we decided to go hiking. We really like going, but haven't really had a chance since Febuary. On sunday, we didn't really get the ideal early start that I prefer, but we left the house by about 8:30. That got us out on the trail at ~9:00, which is just fine. It was a beautiful day. It was hot, but not too hot, and we didn't step into any major nests of seed ticks. We were both really surprised at how much better we felt when we got home. It was really great, except now I want to go hiking again this weekend, but we probably won't have time.

This has been a really long entry. I have to finish cleaning the house so it can have a showing.
I've included a picture from the trail we went on yesterday. It's one from Febuary, hopefully I'll get the pictures out of the camera from yesterday soon.


Brian

26 May 2006

The house is listed!

The house is all clean, and the listing is up!
The Rubicon is really crossed now. No going back at this point.
I've been calling places in St. Louis for apartments this morning.
Most exciting! There's a showing today! I've got to go clean the last things so it will be ready at 3. Woo!
Guess I'd better get going. Seems like there's lots to do.

22 May 2006

the new siding is Finally on!

Well, I checked my email for the first time in a week. I'm glad that civilizaton didn't and that no one died or anything, but I'd like to think that someone at least noticed that I had been out of touch for a week.
Though, the new siding is on my house! Yay!
I thought that the project would kill me last week. a week of ~12 hour days may be no fun at the time, but it's probably good for one once in a while.
I hope to take some pictures soon, and post them here.
Brian

08 May 2006

Busy Weekend!


Anne and I had a ReAnne and I had a Really busy weekend!
She took off Thurs. and Fri. to get ready for our rummage sale, so we interacted with the County regarding the small garden in the street that they refuse to clean out, the lumber yard regarding the new siding we are putting on the house next weekend, and two realtors regarding listing our house. One of them seemed really nice and on top of stuff, the other raved about closing costs, how she wouldn't give us any notice about people seeing the house, and used the word "Warsh" We're going to go with the first one. Thursday afternoon we started going around packing stuff to take over to the shop for the sale. On Friday, we spent the whole day pricing and loading and stuff. On Saturday, we had the fateful rummage sale, at which we sold very nearly everything we took, and made ~$150. A little low for all that work, but as Anne pointed out, we were letting people pay us to haul away our old junk. Saturday evening, and Sunday morning, we were too tired to do much. Sunday afternoon we went and played D&D with our friends, and Tom made a really tasty roast for us.ally busy weekend!
She took off Thurs. and Fri. to get ready for our rummage sale, so we interacted with the County regarding the small garden in the street that they refuse to clean out, the lumber yard regarding the new siding we are putting on the house next weekend, and two realtors regarding listing our house. One of them seemed really nice and on top of stuff, the other raved about closing costs, how she wouldn't give us any notice about people seeing the house, and used the word "Warsh" We're going to go with the first one. Thursday afternoon we started going around packing stuff to take over to the shop for the sale. On Friday, we spent the whole day pricing and loading and stuff. On Saturday, we had the fateful rummage sale, at which we sold very nearly everything we took, and made ~$150. A little low for all that work, but as Anne pointed out, we were letting people pay us to haul away our old junk. Saturday evening, and Sunday morning, we were too tired to do much. Sunday afternoon we went and played D&D with our friends, and Tom made a really tasty roast for us.

I really wish we had time to go camping or hiking. Here's a picture I took last summer on the Katie trail. That's the MO river at about 6:00 am in June.
I dont' know how to make the picture go down here where I want it, so I will leave it where it is.

03 May 2006

Good Picture





You know what I don't understand? Why Republicans are not more angry about "Jr." than Democrats.
I would be enraged if a half witted criminal were running the country, and we was from a political party that I was associated with.
I mean, it's one thing if one really is a conservative, but isn't he giving conservatives everywhere a bad name?

I finally started a Blog.

Well, I finally started a Blog. Why? I'm not really sure, but here I am anyway.
It was like a strange compulsion, it kept bugging me until I finally went and did it.
Oh, well.

Maybe this will be my only post.

Or, maybe not.