Another Grumpy Day
Apr. 13th, 2021 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickOne of my coworkers was out sick (not the plague, fortunately), so it was just me and Talky and a lot of work. Spent most of my day tracking down various problems and doing GL stuff and whatnot -- had to poke about the credit card stuff too. It's -- frustrating, for lack of a better word. Especially when Talky starts getting, well, talky. . .at least today I didn't end up coming in too soon, or going out too late. Though I did come home to my Dad struggling with a spreadsheet, which we all got sucked into. . . *sigh* I suppose it is the 13th.
Anyway -- I did at least complete my to-do list to my satisfaction (despite getting very distracted earlier going through some of the archives of one of my webcomics -- Sluggy Freelance posted a reference-heavy comic today!) --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Got back on the bike today, and started Jon’s Fallout 4 “Nuka-World Level One Survival” series! Now, the title is a slight misnomer – obviously, Jon can’t do the ENTIRETY of the Nuka-World DLC at level one. Not only would it be suicide, it’s also genuinely not possible – most of what you do in the Commonwealth gives you XP, so leveling up is inevitable at SOME point. So the actual challenge is to go to the park and complete the DLC at the lowest level he possibly can, with the added caveat that he must start the DLC still at level one – that means doing as few experience-gaining activities as possible until he reaches the Nuka-World transit center. Once he sees the giant bottles, he’s good to level! (Actually, it would be very fitting to hit Level 2 from finding the transit center. . .)
Anyway, we started off with his new character, Minnie – a female Sole Survivor with high Endurance and Agility, decent Perception, and minimal Intelligence and Luck. An unusual build for the crit-loving Jon, he acknowledged, but being as she’s doing a rather tough DLC (while it’s not actually level-locked, you don’t get the PROMPT to start doing it – aka the Nuka-Family Radio Signal – until you hit Level 30), she needs the extra hit points Endurance gives her – and since she has to stay low level, having 1 INT means she gets fewer experience points, giving her more time to actually prep for her journey. Jon also roleplayed her as absolutely obsessed with Nuka-World, leading to him responding as her seeing the bomb hit with “BUT WE’RE STILL GOING TO NUKA-WORLD LATER, RIGHT?” XD If Minnie doesn’t somehow become best friends with Sierra while in the park. . .
Anyway, once Minnie was past the intro, it was time to get started. Step one – get out of Vault 111 without gaining too much XP – which, in this case, translated to killing as few radroaches as possible. Jon killed one just to see how fast his Critical meter filled (REALLY slowly), then sprinted past the rest until he got to the final room, where he was forced to kill the two in there to get Minnie out of combat and actually pick up the Pip-Boy. Personal computer and a ton of purified water from filling empty bottles at the sinks and water fountains in hand, Minnie reentered the world and made for Sanctuary (Jon taking a moment to gush about how he feels Fallout 4 does the best job of introducing the character to the general nuclear wasteland). She met up with Codsworth, refusing to take the tempting speech check and instead sending him out to get food and kill all the local bugs for her before raiding the place for useful supplies – even using the workshop’s ability to scrap safes to pick up their contents without gaining any XP from lockpicking. She did have to build herself a sink for water and a bed for sleep, though, but neither gave her that much experience. As for clothing, thanks to some unlucky draws, she ended up a hipster postman – Military Cap, Sunglasses, and the Postman Uniform. XD Well, I suppose there are worse things to be. . . I left it with her venturing out of Sanctuary in search of power armor – no, not the set in Concord. Meeting Preston completes the first quest of the game and gives her a bunch of XP, remember? Can’t level up! But Jon has a lead on a set he can find elsewhere, that only requires the death of one dog – and allows him to pick up a good gun (a subnosed .44) along the way. Quite curious to see where he and Minnie are going!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Almost done with the tutorial – Alice has sucked dry a few rats and played at Jack’s shooting gallery – only two hits, but she’s new to firearms that aren’t pepper grinders. Currently got her upstairs, ready to take out the two idiots who think this is a gang war. Despite this, Alice is going to feel reasonably guilty about killing them – especially since, unlike vampires, their bodies aren’t just going to dissolve. This isn’t a pacifist run, but I do think Alice is going to try and take the least lethal way out of most situations. (Honestly, the only reason she’s doing this is because the more powerful vampire told her to and probably will kill them anyway if she doesn’t. I can see this factoring into her later decision to stake Jack. . .)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check! Both YouTube Subs videos, sandwiched between two SimsTuber videos –
A) Started with a Plumbella “updating y’all on my life” video – she’s doing better mental-health-wise, apparently, which is a good thing! Got some new meds to control her hormones trying to make her life worse. Had to break from some assholes over on Facebook, though, who apparently thought it amusing to call her a “grief thief” for mourning the death of a close friend and doing a fundraiser in his honor. . .ugh, people. But she has her YouTube, and her cats, and she says she’s doing better, so I’m glad about that. :)
B) Then it was time for Call Me Kevin and Floating Sandbox – a game with a chunk of ocean, a variety of ships, both real and imaginary (along with other vehicles – who wants to play with the Goodyear Blimp, or the drop bus from Fortnite?), and many, many ways to destroy all those ships. XD Kevin took the Titanic out for a spin a couple of times – slicing it, dicing it, sending it into storms where lightning made it disintegrate, and using strange space-time warpers to send the wreckage to another dimension. And that was before he broke out the Titanic in a bottle. . .yes, that is a real thing in this game. XD Also a real thing – The Unsinkable ship, made out of sturdy sheet metal! . . .Kevin sunk it nearly immediately by accidentally punching a bunch of holes in the hull. XD Basically it was chaos and I approve.
C) Speaking of things of which I approve. . .more GrayStillPlays Happy Wheels! You know an episode is good when it starts with the Yeetinator 9000 prototype and sends Gray and his bicycle man through an absolutely wacky board at high speed – obstacle dodges, a loop-de-loop, a bottle fall, and somehow in the middle of it all, a win. Took Gray a few tries to yeet his bloody torso there, but he managed eventually! Other highlights included the Green Rope Swing (which was stabbier than your average rope swing); a conveyor belt of doom (Gray’s jumping skills saved him there); a troll bottle run (with both fake and real wins, except the real one had a fan under it – despite this, Gray managed to find a way to fall at EXACTLY the right angle to brush the one corner that would count); and a harpoon dodge with pogo man in extremely tight quarters, with ten million harpoons and a win area lined with mines (this one took – some finessing, but eventually Gray got the right amount of luck to fire off the harpoons and throw his pogo stick to blow up the mines so he could land his bisected body on the win). As usual, the intersection of the creators’ sadism and Gray’s tenacity makes for a thoroughly good time. :p
D) And, since I had some time, I sought out an old onlyabidoang video I hadn’t watched on the November 2020 Patch for Sims 4. Nothing too new here, just going over some features that are now almost half a year old, but I did learn something new about sentiments! Namely, it’s the color of the background that determines how long they last – the darker the color, the longer-lasting the sentiment. Neat! Always good to learn new things.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Victor Luvs Alice was literally just “put the stuff already in the drafts in my queue, then make sure all the Newcrest Adventures posts fire tomorrow,” while Valice Multiverse, due to a lack of activity, was just a few reblogs. Nothing too special!
So yeah, that's all good at least. Just gotta finish up messages and then head to bed. Hump day tomorrow. . .we'll see how the office is. Hopefully I can get some other shit done that's starting to fall by the wayside. . .night all!
Anyway -- I did at least complete my to-do list to my satisfaction (despite getting very distracted earlier going through some of the archives of one of my webcomics -- Sluggy Freelance posted a reference-heavy comic today!) --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Got back on the bike today, and started Jon’s Fallout 4 “Nuka-World Level One Survival” series! Now, the title is a slight misnomer – obviously, Jon can’t do the ENTIRETY of the Nuka-World DLC at level one. Not only would it be suicide, it’s also genuinely not possible – most of what you do in the Commonwealth gives you XP, so leveling up is inevitable at SOME point. So the actual challenge is to go to the park and complete the DLC at the lowest level he possibly can, with the added caveat that he must start the DLC still at level one – that means doing as few experience-gaining activities as possible until he reaches the Nuka-World transit center. Once he sees the giant bottles, he’s good to level! (Actually, it would be very fitting to hit Level 2 from finding the transit center. . .)
Anyway, we started off with his new character, Minnie – a female Sole Survivor with high Endurance and Agility, decent Perception, and minimal Intelligence and Luck. An unusual build for the crit-loving Jon, he acknowledged, but being as she’s doing a rather tough DLC (while it’s not actually level-locked, you don’t get the PROMPT to start doing it – aka the Nuka-Family Radio Signal – until you hit Level 30), she needs the extra hit points Endurance gives her – and since she has to stay low level, having 1 INT means she gets fewer experience points, giving her more time to actually prep for her journey. Jon also roleplayed her as absolutely obsessed with Nuka-World, leading to him responding as her seeing the bomb hit with “BUT WE’RE STILL GOING TO NUKA-WORLD LATER, RIGHT?” XD If Minnie doesn’t somehow become best friends with Sierra while in the park. . .
Anyway, once Minnie was past the intro, it was time to get started. Step one – get out of Vault 111 without gaining too much XP – which, in this case, translated to killing as few radroaches as possible. Jon killed one just to see how fast his Critical meter filled (REALLY slowly), then sprinted past the rest until he got to the final room, where he was forced to kill the two in there to get Minnie out of combat and actually pick up the Pip-Boy. Personal computer and a ton of purified water from filling empty bottles at the sinks and water fountains in hand, Minnie reentered the world and made for Sanctuary (Jon taking a moment to gush about how he feels Fallout 4 does the best job of introducing the character to the general nuclear wasteland). She met up with Codsworth, refusing to take the tempting speech check and instead sending him out to get food and kill all the local bugs for her before raiding the place for useful supplies – even using the workshop’s ability to scrap safes to pick up their contents without gaining any XP from lockpicking. She did have to build herself a sink for water and a bed for sleep, though, but neither gave her that much experience. As for clothing, thanks to some unlucky draws, she ended up a hipster postman – Military Cap, Sunglasses, and the Postman Uniform. XD Well, I suppose there are worse things to be. . . I left it with her venturing out of Sanctuary in search of power armor – no, not the set in Concord. Meeting Preston completes the first quest of the game and gives her a bunch of XP, remember? Can’t level up! But Jon has a lead on a set he can find elsewhere, that only requires the death of one dog – and allows him to pick up a good gun (a subnosed .44) along the way. Quite curious to see where he and Minnie are going!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Almost done with the tutorial – Alice has sucked dry a few rats and played at Jack’s shooting gallery – only two hits, but she’s new to firearms that aren’t pepper grinders. Currently got her upstairs, ready to take out the two idiots who think this is a gang war. Despite this, Alice is going to feel reasonably guilty about killing them – especially since, unlike vampires, their bodies aren’t just going to dissolve. This isn’t a pacifist run, but I do think Alice is going to try and take the least lethal way out of most situations. (Honestly, the only reason she’s doing this is because the more powerful vampire told her to and probably will kill them anyway if she doesn’t. I can see this factoring into her later decision to stake Jack. . .)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check! Both YouTube Subs videos, sandwiched between two SimsTuber videos –
A) Started with a Plumbella “updating y’all on my life” video – she’s doing better mental-health-wise, apparently, which is a good thing! Got some new meds to control her hormones trying to make her life worse. Had to break from some assholes over on Facebook, though, who apparently thought it amusing to call her a “grief thief” for mourning the death of a close friend and doing a fundraiser in his honor. . .ugh, people. But she has her YouTube, and her cats, and she says she’s doing better, so I’m glad about that. :)
B) Then it was time for Call Me Kevin and Floating Sandbox – a game with a chunk of ocean, a variety of ships, both real and imaginary (along with other vehicles – who wants to play with the Goodyear Blimp, or the drop bus from Fortnite?), and many, many ways to destroy all those ships. XD Kevin took the Titanic out for a spin a couple of times – slicing it, dicing it, sending it into storms where lightning made it disintegrate, and using strange space-time warpers to send the wreckage to another dimension. And that was before he broke out the Titanic in a bottle. . .yes, that is a real thing in this game. XD Also a real thing – The Unsinkable ship, made out of sturdy sheet metal! . . .Kevin sunk it nearly immediately by accidentally punching a bunch of holes in the hull. XD Basically it was chaos and I approve.
C) Speaking of things of which I approve. . .more GrayStillPlays Happy Wheels! You know an episode is good when it starts with the Yeetinator 9000 prototype and sends Gray and his bicycle man through an absolutely wacky board at high speed – obstacle dodges, a loop-de-loop, a bottle fall, and somehow in the middle of it all, a win. Took Gray a few tries to yeet his bloody torso there, but he managed eventually! Other highlights included the Green Rope Swing (which was stabbier than your average rope swing); a conveyor belt of doom (Gray’s jumping skills saved him there); a troll bottle run (with both fake and real wins, except the real one had a fan under it – despite this, Gray managed to find a way to fall at EXACTLY the right angle to brush the one corner that would count); and a harpoon dodge with pogo man in extremely tight quarters, with ten million harpoons and a win area lined with mines (this one took – some finessing, but eventually Gray got the right amount of luck to fire off the harpoons and throw his pogo stick to blow up the mines so he could land his bisected body on the win). As usual, the intersection of the creators’ sadism and Gray’s tenacity makes for a thoroughly good time. :p
D) And, since I had some time, I sought out an old onlyabidoang video I hadn’t watched on the November 2020 Patch for Sims 4. Nothing too new here, just going over some features that are now almost half a year old, but I did learn something new about sentiments! Namely, it’s the color of the background that determines how long they last – the darker the color, the longer-lasting the sentiment. Neat! Always good to learn new things.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Victor Luvs Alice was literally just “put the stuff already in the drafts in my queue, then make sure all the Newcrest Adventures posts fire tomorrow,” while Valice Multiverse, due to a lack of activity, was just a few reblogs. Nothing too special!
So yeah, that's all good at least. Just gotta finish up messages and then head to bed. Hump day tomorrow. . .we'll see how the office is. Hopefully I can get some other shit done that's starting to fall by the wayside. . .night all!
