LaeliaJS

Ok, here's what you SHOULD get your woman. Please bear in mind that this is way more confusing than what you shouldn't get her. First, the "safe" gifts: Anything from Bath and Body Works. Girls love this stuff. They even have cute little gift packages. Roses. These are good for momentary happy fuzzies. Don't get them more than twice a year or she'll expect them and notice when you don't give them to her. Chocolate. The kind the comes in a fancy box. Don't overdo it, or she'll accuse you of trying to make her fat. A picture of you together with her. Framed and signed on the back. Two ways to get this one: 1) have a friend stalk you with a camera. 2) Have said photo already lying around from a vacation. 3) Have it done without the surprise. Stuffed animals. Just make sure it's cute. If she's a cat person, get her a cat. Dog person, get her a dog. If you're not sure, get a bear. A night out. Dinner at a high class resturant, tickets to a ballet or play, some event where she has the opportunity to dress up fancy. CDs. Watch her for lip syncing to the radio. That means she likes that band. Buy accordingly. Cards. Girls LOVE cards, the sappier and mushier the better. Write at least three sentances in it, in blue or red pen, telling her how much you love her. Save those for non-holidays and don't overdo them. Now on to the harder stuff.... The essential key to gift-giving is understanding that most women have a "theme". This means a certain animal, color, flower, symbol, actor, etc that they obsess over and decorate their home and/or stuff with. A woman may have more than one theme, as well (my sister has like 20 so she's extremely easy to shop for). A good way of finding out a woman's theme is by looking on their keychain, they'll usually have something (or several somethings) hanging off it that fits their theme. Another good hint is looking at the pictures on the walls of her living room. Almost anything she doesn't have already that fits her theme, she will probably be really happy with. It's likely to be a "perfect" present, if you manage to fit two or more themes. It doesn't have to be useful, either - Girls love knick knacks that fit their theme. Pictures are a good target for this, too. Mall shopping with your significant other, though admittedly an often painful experience, is a good way to figure out what to get for a present. If you notice her cooing over something in a store, or trying on an article of clothing or jewelry and going "whoa, I love this, it's awesome!" but she doesn't buy it, that is a VERY big hint to go back later and buy it for a future present. Also watch her as she's browsing catalogs at home. This is the one time you can break the 'don't get her this' list. Girls will often complain about a particular recurring problem they have. Get something to remedy this problem. This is easier to spot than you might think. If she complains more than twice about something, get something for her to fill that need. For example, if she complains that the address numbers on the house are too dark to see, get her some nice big and bright ones. If she complains about things being too quiet when she's alone, get a bird feeder for the window, or a windchime. If she's constantly losing her keys, get her a wall hanging key holder. In this case, it's still best to avoid cleaning tools or cooking utensils. Finally, if your girl happens to like minis, paint one up for her as if you were painting for a GD.

Along the same vein.... What NOT to get your woman for Christmas/Valentine's Day/Birthday/Anniversary etc. Cleaning utensils. You send the message she's only good for doing housework. Kitchen utensils. You send the message she's only good for cooking. Clothes. It is impossible to get a woman's size right. These will either be too big, which implies she's fat, or too small, which implies you think she should lose weight. Along the same vein... Sexy Lingire. This is a present for YOU, not HER. Jewelry of any type. Unless it's an engagement ring, she won't like it, no matter how expensive, and she'll be upset she doesn't like it. Don't ask why. Shoes. Shoes are like jewelry. Coupons or gift certificates of any kind. This implies you're too lazy to get her a real gift. Technology. Unless you're dating a she-geek, she doesn't want a new camera/scanner/HDTV/cell phone as a gift. Anything she tells you when you say "What do you want for this holiday?"

I have absolutely no problem looking at nudes, but I wouldn't ever look at them at work. :creep: Even though I'm a girl and I have quite a bit of leniency at what I do with any free time I get. The reason for this: Looking at anything even vaguely resembling nudes is not a good thing to do to your boss, even (or especially) a laid back boss. Because there's always bean counters, in any company, and the phrase "Your employee is looking at porn on company time" is something no one ever wants to hear much less try to justify. You can argue semantics all you want about art vs porn, but it's a much different story when someone wearing a business suit is trying to justify paying you lots of money, in a meeting with people who by definition of the job always have a bug in their shorts.

I enjoyed the movie. It was a lot like the third one - As long as you went in expecting a ton of stuff to be cut out from the book, it was a good movie. I liked the dragon scene, the ball (haha, straight from the book, it amused me greatly), the underwater scene, and the maze scene. However, unlike the rest of the movies, for this one I got the feeling that you really did have to read the book first to make any sense of the movie. A lot of the character development was really rushed too... I feel kind of sorry for the girl that played Cho, something like 40,000 girls auditioned for the part and she got about 4 minutes worth of screen time. In my opinion the second movie (Chamber of Secrets) was the best movie so far. Plenty of magic, lots of plot, good character development, and lots of fun monsters.

There's actually a lot of big money in online multiplayer games. Diablo, Everquest, Everquest 2, DAOC, etc etc. Even text based muds... I made several thousand dollars selling platinums for real money in a mud called Dragonrealms, and when you figure out the exchange rate, a boat in Dragonrealms costs more than a car does in real life. Why do people spend real life money on these games? Because they're either in college or have full time jobs that pay well but very few expenses, and they have all this money lying around that they're not using. They spend upwards of 30-60 hours a week playing these games, so why not invest money into it too? For buying items... if something in said game is rare or takes a very long time (6+ hours) to have even a small shot at getting it, the item can mean more to them than having the money in real life. Think of it kind of like Magic: The Gathering cards. You can spend $3 on a pack of cards that you don't know the contents of, but some players spend over $500 on a single card just because it's so rare and useful. As for buying fake money... It can often take weeks to earn enough in-game coinage for something you want. To a rich person that is lazy or time strained, buying money is a very very tempting proposition. It can also be an investment - What you buy now may become much rarer later and you can sell it at a large profit. The whole thing does toe the line a bit between fantasy and reality, and there's thousands of pages worth of debate about the ethics of buying in game advantages for real life money. It is something, though, that's getting more and more popular as time goes on. PS - System admins have been known to illegally create characters, items, and money just to horn in on this. However, it's extremely risky... online game companies invaribly watch for cheating very closely, and crooked admins are usually caught fast and booted from the game without mercy.

Oog... traffic tickets. I've gotten three... they were all several years ago, though. For the first one, I was in high school, in this insanely ugly green car that I bought from my grandmother. To make matters worse, I had one of my classmates in the car, and a bunch of cans in the back to take to the recycle station for a fundraiser and it was in an area I'd never been in before. I guess that car stood out like a sore thumb, I've gotten most of my tickets while driving it. The other two tickets were dumb speeding tickets. I haven't gotten any tickets after I moved to Arizona. Yay.

Legally: This would fall under copyright/public domain laws, just like any other form of artwork. Public domain allows anyone to use a work, regardless of whether it's for profit or not. Those laws are so convoluted and involve so many conflicting clauses and counter clauses that you really would need a lawyer to understand them. This is why copyright lawyers make a fortune. Ethically: In my opinion, as long as a) The original company or companies that produced the mini are either out of business or give permission, the original sculpter is either dead or gives permission, AND c) ALL credit to the original author and company is given, then it should be all right to recast a mini. How I see it, this is sort of similar to a company selling a reprint of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Said company makes a profit off selling it, they're a business after all, but they're still giving credit to the author, it's entirely legal, and there's nothing wrong with doing this. Someone else can buy said reprint of the play, and charge people to see it. Of course, with selling recast minis there'd be the issue of royalties to the original author, which gets into some of the much messier laws of copyright. Oh, and poses can't be copyrighted, either, no matter how funky silly they are. Neither can names, ideas, individual words, or anything that's already in the public domain. MP3s and ripped software are a whole other can of worms, one which I'm not touching with a 10 foot pole.

I have a very large selection of music, and I listen to a bunch of bands no one's ever heard of. I can't really describe the music except that it all has a "fantasy" feel to it, since it varies widely. So I'll just list the band names in no particular order. Nightwish Medeval Babaes Heather Alexander Blind Guardian Rhapsody Kamelot Angra Iced Earth Lacuna Coil Evanescence Dream Theatre They Might Be Giants The Black Mages The Trans Siberian Orchestra Cecilia Eng Leslie Fish Lorien Styx Dave Matthew's Band Demons and Wizards The Black Mages Sisters of Mercy E Nomine Enya Lorena McKennit Incubus Sting Live Sonata Arctica Therion Luca Turilli Hammerfall Songs ripped from pretty much every RPG game or series in existance, including but not limited to: Final Fantasy, Neverwinter Nights, Soul Reaver, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Warcraft, Castlevania, and Zelda.

Kneeling Tiriel: She was originally going to be fully NMM. For the last shade I grabbed pearl white instead of pure white and went "Oops, that's metallic." but I really liked the effect it made, so I kept using it to flesh out the last layer. One of these days I'll have to figure out how to use that diffusion box thing so my minis don't cast shadows.

I'll admit it... Your Tiriel inspired her. I stared at your picture of it on CMON for a long long while and seriously considered offering you several hundred dollars for her. Instead, since I'm poor, I painted several of my own.

Yeah a little... It didn't look right with a white background, so I changed that, but now the mini's 1500 miles away from me, so I can't take any more pictures. I was (and still am) working on how to take decent pictures. Thanks for the compliments

Tiriel is my favorite mini. All three poses. Although I haven't had time to paint the dynamic one yet. This is a Tiriel I painted when my aunt went into a coma in late July. It's currently at my Uncle's house. It's my first attempt at freehand, my first attempt at NMM, my first attempt at sculpting with greenstuff, and my first attempt at source lighting. Considering how many firsts I had in there, I think it came out pretty good.

I've played AD&D, gurp, free form, and our own rule setup. I've found that the type of rule system, although important, doesn't matter as much as having good players and a good GM. In any case, you have some interesting ideas, although they're rather rough, and you have the enthusiasm required for good GMing. Flesh them out a bit, get yourself some players, and give it a shot.