Hey guys, I'm back (kinda)
First of all, I want to wish you all a Happy and Productive New Year! And as little things as possible that you have no influence on, cause 2015 was as bad as it could possibly get for me because of those kind of stuff, but more on that later..
To answer a couple of your questions first,
Yapi man great job, you are one of my most dedicated followers, and I respect that.. After all this time you are still hating, so I must did something worth envying about and I'm really proud of that.
Pohernori, sadly I haven't started working on any new "big" project yet, cause as I probably already said, I'm a perfectionist and I don't like leaving stuff unfinished, so I won't start working on anything this big until I'm done with this build, but I already have a couple of new fun stuff in mind, and I even got around to sketch a bit of it.
And a biggest Balkan site that hosted all of my pictures got shut down, so I will reupload everything that I can in a later post and also include a couple of new stuff that I worked on, that you didn't yet see
So, to get back on topic.. I just feel like I have an obligation to apologize to all of you for taking so long to finish this build and to say that I won't be able to finish it any time soon.. So I must to explain in depth why is it taking so long, and I don't really like talking about my personal life on the "interwebs", but 2015 was without a doubht THE worst year of my life so far, and it turned my life upside-down in every way possible..
To start the year, as a lot of you already know, I have problems with EKWB and their sponsorship, cause they promised me a lot of stuff, gave me about a half of that and told me to ask them later about the rest, gave me a lot of hoops to jump through, which I all did and they just without a reason backed off. So I needed to buy a part of those parts myself and convince Bitspower to cover the rest, which they did but I had to pay them some percent of that also.. At that time, I was just a student, so I pulled a lot of money allocated for finishing a build to buy those basic parts, so I didn't have enough to work properly on a build at a time. So when I got some funds from some part time jobs I did I worked on a build, and in the meantime I started studying for my masters degree. And I tried to balance my work (to get some money), passion (building the Ultima), and education, and everything got back on track and worked out for a while..
But, for a long time I had some stomach issues and I really didn't pay much attention to it, and I just attributed it to starting to be lactose intolerant and left it like that.. And a couple of months into 2015 my health deteriorated, and I spend around 2 months going through various clinics and hospitals in Belgrade (Serbia's capital) just to figure out what's wrong with me, yet alone find a treatment.. But, Serbia is still for the most part a third world country, and corruption and bad habits are basically the law here, so without paying off doctors and specialists I couldn't really make much progress.. So I tried doing that, but my father lost his regular job a while ago and we didn't have much to work with, so after a couple of months we just had to gave in and stop researching and doing tests, and I just had to adjust and remove stuff that I developed sensitivity on from my diet, take a better care of myself etc.
The next thing that hit is a family financial crisis.. As I said, my father already lost his job a while ago and started working for some other company that paid much less, but a man his age didn't have a pool of options to chose from, especially not in Serbia and also in a small town in which I live in. So it worked fine for a while, but that company dissolved and after that, he was without a job for almost half a year. And we primarily lived on my mothers medium wage, so I had to pretty much abandon my studies (yet alone this build) to work and get some income so we can pretty much survive..
And you all know how bad finances can influence people, so my father fell into depression from feeling pretty much useless, cause he couldn't support his family any more and watching us struggle, which created a tension inside our house.. So he finally got some low paying job and we started getting our head above water, but his mental health didn't improve.. And after a month or so of arguing and fighting, he decided to leave me and my mother, and move out, taking quite a lot of our stuff and leaving us in pretty substantial credit debt. So I just had to give up on everything I did and just focus myself on working part time jobs and trying to find a job in my field of study which is technical and chemical engineering. And if all of that chaos wasn't enough, a girl with who I was for 5,5 years decided to leave me for no apparent reason, and she was my "emotional rock" so to say through all of those bad stuff and I even lost that. And to top it all off, one of my best friends (that happens to be a girl) got killed by a car soon after. I just cannot explain you how I felt when all of those things were happening, 1 by 1, everything worse that the last, without end in sight.. But I managed not to completely break down, cause I had to be there for my mother and help her out keep a roof above our heads, so I just lost myself in work.
As I already described my country, finding a job here is hard.. Especially for young people coming straight out of collage without any work experience, and even if you have it you need connections and strings to pull or to pay off directors and people in power, just to get a minimum paid jobs, yet alone engineering work.. So I just worked some hard physical stuff and in the meantime fixed computers for friends just to get by, and went on interviews for engineering jobs around the country, but even now I still didn't get accepted anywhere, even tho I was one of the first to finish studies in my year and with best grades of all that finished so far.. That's just Serbian things..
After all of that, I just had no choice, but to try to find a job abroad, but even for that you need to invest to pay for the trip etc, which I didn't have funds for, so I submitted application for some low/medium paying job in a nearby country and I will be absent for around 3 months, cause my mother and me just can't get by with all of those debts, even with me working my ass off for like 16 hours a day every single day of the week..
And that's pretty much "my 2015 year in review".. Just a lot of bad stuff I couldn't do anything about..
So, this mod will be finished, just not in the next 3 or 4 months for sure, cause I will be working abroad, and I can't finish it right now, cause I'm departing soon.
After all of 2015 stuff that happened, I think that I can survive anything the life throws at me now, and I'm NOT giving up on any of the goals I set for me to do in my life, just postponing, which I think it's pretty realistic and that I don't really have much choice until I pull myself and my family back on some solid ground.
Once again, I wish you all the best in new 2016 and everything opposite from my 2015
And hope you guys will be there in a couple of months when I should finallyyy be able to finish this project, and start working on some new exciting stuff
