Hi all...and Merry Christmas

[Randomdays]

Just dropping in to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I haven't been working on FF for a while due to various RL drama and wanted to say Hi. For those who sent emails and messages, thanks for the concern and its appreciated.

Since I was last active a few months, back, I caught a bad case of Covid that took me out for a week, my wife was in the hospital for a few days with an uneven heartbeat, and I came down with cancer. My wife is doing much better, and the cancer was caught at a very early stage since I have a great, old fashioned primary doctor who actually knows and cares about his patients.

Also, add into the mix that the company I've been with for the last 16 years will be going out of business next year and I'll have to decide what to do next. I'm in my early 60's, getting close to retiring anyway, but there's not a lot out there that pays well for someone so close to leaving the workforce.

But things could be worse, and somehow I've always been able to muddle through - I think that my luck stat must be pretty high.

Not really working on FF at the moment, but I would like to add to the list and finish up the map I was working on. For those who hsve bee nasking for help with Blender and other questions,  f you still need it and are still out there, I'll see if I can work with you next year.

Again, thanks for the concern and I hope you all have a Happy Holiday.

RD

[deanjo2000]

Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I?m glad you?re doing ok and that must of been scary. I?m also on a break from ff but will get back into it next year. Stay safe and fingers crossed things work out for you.

[WyldFyre]

Glad to hear that things are improving RD. May you and yours have a Merry Christmas and may the New Year be even better for you!

And warm Holiday wishes to everyone.

[BentonGrey]

Hello all, and a very merry Christmas! 

I have made it through my first semester at my new university, and it was one of the hardest but most rewarding things I've ever done.  In addition to jumping directly into 4 classes and three preps (all of them relatively new and 3 of them writing classes!), we also bought a new house up in Indiana, I started an editing internship for my students, and I was generally working 24/7I had ZERO time for my hobbies, including FF, but things should be calmer this next semester and summer, so y'all should see more of me starting fairly soon. 

RD, I'm so glad to hear that you are, all things considered, okay.  I was worried about you when you went radio-silent.  I'm sorry that y'all have faced such difficulty and so much uncertainty, but I'm glad that y'all are on the mend.  I'll be praying for wisdom as you try to decide what to do next.  I hope it will be something grand!

I hope that this season brings peace and joy to all of y'all, and to all of our scattered FR friends and family.

[SickAlice]

The RL and that virus for that matter. Mostly as anyone else here I think people more just care how you are doing than FF stuff. I'm on pause myself while I sort some things out and mostly I just check in to see how anyone else is holding up this winter. Glad, sort of to hear you are surviving though more than anything I hope you get the job situation sorted out. That's no good. Feel free to just drop in when you can and just let people know that you are getting by. You are part of this community and you matter, content be damned. Happy holidays and to everyone else and I hope anyone had the best they could this year.

[BentonGrey]

Well said, SA!

[Epimethee]

Take good care of yourself, RD. Happy Holidays to you and to everyone here!

[cranlox]

damn cancer! Yes, that is a real difficulty.
It really is a heavy thing.
I hope your good doc can score a stupendous resolution in his career.
Around here in Argentina they are also closing companies all the time. But at least we won a cup this world cup?!

I hope you continue well and that when you feel like it you will actively return to the community. Your map was really a very complex thing!


Happy Holidays and Holidays to everyone on the forum.

[Randomdays]

Thanks to all the replies and additional PM's I got. They are very much appreciated. Hopefully 2023 will be a better year for all.

For a little 'gift', a few people have reached out to me about my original lessons on Blender and importing/exporting. The original posts are still here, but the imageshack pics are long gone. I hadn't been too worried about it since SA had graciously been hosting a backup on his site on FFF, but with that gone there was no more safety net.

I was able to grab the imageshack pics using the original links and wayback (thanks to whoever saved them back in the day - one backup made in 10/2012) and re-upped them to the image site I'm using now. I re-upped the pics and did a few spelling corrections.

For any who found the lessons useful, I suggest saving the entire page as "webpage complete" to preserve the complete lesson and pics  for future personal use.

The original lessons dealt with Blender basics and importing,riggin, and exporting new meshes from other games and sources.


For those who didn't see, I added a 2nd set of lessons last year that dealt with materials, pivot points for bending static meshes, importing map objects with textures, importing kfs from other games for new animations, and alpha channels for transparency.

While not perfect and even wrong on a few points, people have found them very useful.

Besides my work, there's some useful info from SA and others as well.

[SickAlice]

Without page hosting for now and time to devote though I am reworking pages on my hard drive when I have time. A new house consumes a lot of course as does just maintaining this one during a winter. Likewise health issues. I had spoken a few times though about a project for 2023 once page hosting is a go again (I'll be without internet connection for a bit when I travel and move to the new bungalow of course) where I wanted to compile tutorials of every kind in an indexed manner to a single source. CB and daglob retained almost everything and ironed out permissions and I have copies of much of it else they left most on Mediafire. More on that next year but I am looking for it to be a mutual project in this community of course which would also involve you. I figure some sort of tome with chapters would be ever so helpful especially for whenever new people arrive or users are open themselves to learning a new aspect of modding.

[eluvium]

Thank goodness you are okay.

[windblown]

Hey RD, I'm sorry to hear that you had a tough year, as others told you FF stuff is secondary here, real life comes first and I hope that things get much better for you in 2023.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Hey RD,

I got your reply DM, thank you for getting back to me. I?m so sorry to hear about your Cancer diagnosis and your wife?s Covid illness (I ended up getting it too this year, then my dad, but thankfully it wasn?t too bad. Thankfully also, my mom didn?t get it from either of us). I glad you had the cancer detected early and I?m sending you positive vibes that you can stomp it. 

I hope your Christmas was great and I also hope your New Year is a wonderful one. Best wishes, buddy.

Dana

P.S. I can?t recall if I ever saw your map. I don?t think I ever downloaded it, actually.

[Randomdays]

Update on the cancer;

Last week was not a good week. I went in on Monday for a biopsy and came home sick afterwards from that. Among others things it turns out I had a reaction to the sulfa-based antibiotics they gave me and was nauseous and had a sever skin rash from it, as well as triggering other allergies. I had a fun-sized snickers bar with peanuts in it and my upper lipped swelled up for over a day before it got better. I've never been allergic to peanuts before and hopefully its just a temporary thing. A bit scary.

But after a terrible weekend I went in today for the results, and they said they found no cancer! The PSA number have been back to normal and I'm not due back to see him for another year!

Yay! Now that I'm recovering from the biopsy, at least the health situation at home seems to have improved.

Thanks for all the good thoughts.

[cranlox]

 they said they found no cancer! ?   

You have no idea how happy you made me with the news!
Many esteemed people in my family fought cancer.
Truly best wishes to you always!
I hope you continue on the right path in health, recovering from everything.

[Randomdays]

So far, things are looking good. Going to keep an eye on it of course. Don't want it sneaking back in.

[stumpy]

Sorry to hear the biopsy was so fraught with complications. But, overall, it sounds like you got fantastic news. Congratulations!

[Epimethee]

Bummer about the allergic reaction, but CONGRATULATIONS on the cancer front!

[WyldFyre]

Very happy to hear that the cancer has gone. Hears hoping it stays away!

[cmdrkoenig67]

Hi RD,

Glad to hear the good news of no cancer found, that's wonderful! I hope your upcoming holiday season is great!

Very best,

Dana

[Randomdays]

Thanks all. I'm well aware of how lucky I am that this regressed on its own (so far). Almost everyone out there has someone in their circle of friends and family affected by this.

It as if though, that with the initial diagnosis that someone gave me a bunch of heavy weights to carry. You get used to the weight after a while, but its always there. And then someone says "Let me take hose from you."

And then the weight is gone, but you're not sure how to handle it. A new mindset will be settling in as the days go by.

So, for all my fellow Americans, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all.

Every day is a blessing.

[deanjo2000]

Great news, atleast it had a happy ending