>> I guess I'll give it another try.

I wouldn't bother. We have been using Ash at work for the past nine months. I'm not a fan, and dread using parts of the app that are built with Ash. It makes my productivity plummet due to cryptic error messages, really poor documentation, and high levels of obfuscation (by way of countless macros) that hides what is happening under the hood. Based on my conversations with other team members, most of the team feels this way. The only reason we're continuing to use it because it enforces a level of standardization on the codebase.