Running Late Friday
Aug. 18th, 2023 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYou can blame Game Night for that -- we played nine games of Sequence, and while we all ended up winning three apiece, the final game dragged on for AGES as nobody was getting any good cards to, you know, actually win. *facepalm* At least the food was good (Mom made little meatball cups and hummus and chips)! And at least I did eventually get this to-do list properly written up --
Work – Day started with me and my coworkers having to shelter in the basement for like a half-hour because of a tornado warning! Yeah, uh, we had some REALLY fucking strong thunderstorms this morning. O.o Fortunately no tornado action got near the Diocese (or my house, for that matter), and the rest of the day proceeded fairly normally – doing the GL and other various reports, taking a few credit card calls, wrapping up the last of the stuff I needed to catch up on, and doing some duplicates. Still, what a way to start a Friday. . .I’m just glad the worst of it was over by the time I went home! (I mean, we did still get one major soaking downpour mid-afternoon, but it moved on fairly quickly, and now it’s drying out and cooling down, which I appreciate. Tomorrow should be pretty nice, according to the weather reports – keep your fingers crossed!)
Sims 4 – Today ended up being another “playing around in CAS” session – mostly because I spent a good chunk of the time before I played downloading a LOT of new clothes! Specifically, I downloaded the “Punk Pride,” “DIY Or Die,” and “Angsty Adolescence” fan stuff packs from Crypt O’Club on tumblr (to go with their “Creepy Creations” pack I downloaded previously); an “1890s working girl mini-set” of blouses, skirts, and an apron overlay from Vintage Simstress; the “Boldness Beckons” and “Authoritative Aristocrat” men’s suits from Historical Sims Life; and two sets of Victorian men’s day wear from Simmer Of The Dawn’s Victorian Collection. I thought the Crypt O’Club stuff would be good for the Coaster Crew (specifically Oblivion, I was struggling with some of their outfits before) and the Victorian stuff for the Valicer In The Dark versions of my Valicer trio. Had a lot of fun playing around with the custom content clothing and accessories and seeing what I liked on who – here’s some sample pictures (in clickable thumbnail form):
Here’s Th13teen, Oblivion, Rita, Smiler, Victor, and Alice showing off some of the Crypt O’Club stuff (along with some other items I’ve downloaded in the past – Oblivion and Th13teen’s pants are a different set, for example). I just couldn’t resist putting Alice in the corset dress, and when I saw some of the tattoos available with the set, they looked like something that Rita would be into. :) The stripes on her new crop-top punk vest are the lesbian flag, by the way, in case you were curious. And I HAD to put Smiler in those pants, since they remind me SO much of Agent Joytide’s outfit from the various Smiler Takeover videos I saw. :D
And here is a representative sample of the Victorian stuff! :) I really like those suits I got for Victor and Smiler – especially Victor’s, as with those pants, it’s about as close as I’ll get to his canon outfit! And Alice doesn’t look half-bad in the working girl’s set – though it occurs to me I forgot to put the apron overlay on it. Have to fix that later. :p But yeah, had a lot of fun playing around with these, and some of my older custom content too – gotta remember to use it more often! :)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike for the week, getting through the following –
A) The very end of Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Into The Deathlands!” Barnaby managed to successfully scam Ethelfrit’s Deathlands Scavengers by marking a fake location out far in the deathlands where the group could find the “stashed carriages” on their map, tempting them by telling them of all the goodies on said carriages, like the Shrek Lanthorns. The Scavengers were VERY excited by those, being big fans of Astor (Edvard only JUST started paying attention to what was going on then XD) – but they insisted Barnaby give them something valuable now before they headed off to find the goods. Barnaby, as per usual, ticked his load to produce a fine bottle of whiskey – and when the Scavengers said they were teetotal, claimed it was non-alcoholic, which is in fact very rare in Volisport and thus very valuable. XD So they took that and creepily crawled back into their hidden trapdoors, allowing the train to continue on unimpeded.
Smash cut to the group arriving back at Volisport, where they encountered a new problem – namely, how to get the train actually back INTO the Coalridge station so the Gut-Cutters could store it for them. Lilith’s attempt at a sensible idea – get the driver and the stoker to tell the officials inspecting everything coming into the train yard about the bridge being out and the lost carriages and such – unfortunately would have completely undone all their efforts to, you know, steal a locomotive (in a way that kept it off the books, anyway), so instead they went with Edvard’s plan –
Disguise it as a giant dog. XD Fortunately the train was carrying a lot of hay and sheepskins and eels that could be arranged to look like a giant dog, and when they encountered the inspectors, he promptly tried to pass himself off as traveling inventor Hieronymous “Big Dog” Bagshot, here to exhibit his big dog! Unfortunately, upon hearing his last name, the inspectors were all like “are you related to Cornelius Bagshot, the guy who disappeared recently” – and when Edvard attempted to go “oh, no, my last name is BagSHOW,” he accidentally changed his first name to “Cornelius” in the process. XD In the end, he just dropped some money on the ground for the officials to pick up, and they took the bribe happily. However, Luke informed them that was, in fact, the LAST of the Hobbyhorses’ cash, as all their scores, while good for the main plotline, hadn’t exactly been profitable for them. Which might be bad for them in the future. (As Jane put it, “I have four stress and no money.” Luke: “The escapism of roleplaying!” XD) For the moment, though, they’d achieved all their aims – namely, get a locomotive, get it back into Volisport without issue, and store it in the Gut-Cutters’ shed. All that remained was to drop off the train crew – the Rail Jacks, driver, and stoker – behind a tavern, and then see if the train driver – the only one who wasn’t clonked on the head or knocked out at any point, and who very definitely saw Barnaby’s face – would eventually squeal or not. Kasimir fired a warning shot at the guy to try and intimidate him during the drop-off, and Luke rolled a die to see if he would break –
And then ENDED THE EPISODE, refusing to tell us what he’d rolled. XD Which MIGHT be a good hint that yes, the train driver will be telling someone at some point, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? Next week – “The Fate Of The Dimmer Sisters!”
B) And a pair of Petey Plays It videos –
I. “10 Growing Together Objects You Need To Start Using | The Sims 4 Guide” – Petey listing five standout items from the Growing Together pack (such as the treehouse your Sims can build, or all the various children’s bicycles), and five items that need more love (like the suitcases Sims can take around as mobile dresses, or the splash pads for designing your own water parks) – plus two “honorable mentions” because he couldn’t help himself (the friendship bracelet kit, because of the cute interactions it enables, and the new games table, because it represented the new games Sims can play with the pack). Good stuff as always, and it’s nice to have some objects I might not otherwise think to use highlighted for me!
II. “Complete Guide To Off-The-Grid Living In The Sims 4” – Petey giving a guide on how you can live “Off-The-Grid” in Sims 4, with a special focus on doing so in Sulani as the challenge was introduced around the time of Island Living’s release. The guide is slightly out of date, having been created back when “Off-The-Grid” was a lot TRAIT instead of a challenge, but the basics still hold up, explaining what works and what doesn’t when you’re off the grid, how to get water, how to earn money and keep yourself entertained without electronics, and how to use Eco Lifestyle to do things like actually get a power surplus going so if you DO want to use a computer for a little while, you can. :p Nothing I didn’t already know from playing on a technically “Off-The-Grid” lot myself, but it filled in the last few minutes of my ride nicely!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has just accidentally implicated Nines in Grout’s murder (despite repeating a couple of times that “I only saw him coming out the front door, and he was acting weird”), and LaCroix, after letting her know the consequences, has just Dominated her into not talking about it with anyone else, especially the Anarchs, until he comes to his decision regarding the blood hunt. Which Alice is NOT happy about, as you might expect. It’s taking pretty much all she has not to try and stab him with his letter opener early. *pats her* Tomorrow, we handle him telling her about her new job – picking up the Ankaran Sarcophagus. At least that’s one step closer to getting her back to her haven and to Victor, who is getting very worried because he can somehow feel something is wrong with Alice. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one today, GrayStillPlay’s latest, “Upgrading tanks to Mechas in Hills of Steel,” aka Gray plays – well, Hills of Steel! This is a game where you start off as a scrub soldier in your scrub ordinary tank, fighting enemies on scrub Earth, and you must find ways to upgrade your tank to something more awesome so you can fight in more awesome locations, such as the Moon and Mars. (You yourself remain a scrub soldier, though you can at least earn rank upgrades.) You can do this by fighting enemies, collecting coins and gems, and slowly working your way through daily reward lootboxes and the like – or you can do things the Gray way, spend real money to buy a bunch of gems, and go straight for the cool tanks, like the Chonk with its big old gun and its circular saw! The Arachno, a tank that crawls along on spidery legs and has a laser minigun attached to the front! The Kraken, a tank that crawls along on squid tentacles and has a laser that it seems to charge via the mechanism of summoning a black hole! (Not to mention the tentacles it can make explode from the ground. . .) The Rex, a tank that is basically a quadruped T-Rex robot with a bite attack and a (strangely underpowered) nuke attached to its back! And the Immortal, a literal demon of a tank with a massive nasty flail (you know, that “spiky thing attached to a handle by a chain” weapon) and the ability to shower the world in meteors at will! Basically things went up to eleven for Gray and “Lt. Yeetington” very very fast once he started getting THOSE tanks in play! XD Ahh, it’s great to see him letting loose and taking out all his GTA Torture Board frustrations on innocent mobile games. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – three thread replies to take care of on Valice Multiverse from Brynlee Marie! Though one of them I couldn’t just reblog, as the stupid UI wouldn’t let me do so properly (it was a thread that started from an ask, which I think was the problem), so I ended up copying her reply into a new post and restarting the thread from there. *grumbles* Tumblr, why you gotta be like this sometimes. . .
Whew -- and now I can FINALLY go to bed. At least tomorrow isn't a cleaning Saturday. . .goals for tomorrow include getting a start on the Chill Valicer Save update for this upcoming week on Victor Luvs Alice; doing more store-related stuff with the Chill Valicer trio in Sims 4; watching some OXBox and OXtra stuff I stuck in my Watch Later; and writing some more "Londerland Bloodlines." Hopefully that is all achievable! Night all!
Work – Day started with me and my coworkers having to shelter in the basement for like a half-hour because of a tornado warning! Yeah, uh, we had some REALLY fucking strong thunderstorms this morning. O.o Fortunately no tornado action got near the Diocese (or my house, for that matter), and the rest of the day proceeded fairly normally – doing the GL and other various reports, taking a few credit card calls, wrapping up the last of the stuff I needed to catch up on, and doing some duplicates. Still, what a way to start a Friday. . .I’m just glad the worst of it was over by the time I went home! (I mean, we did still get one major soaking downpour mid-afternoon, but it moved on fairly quickly, and now it’s drying out and cooling down, which I appreciate. Tomorrow should be pretty nice, according to the weather reports – keep your fingers crossed!)
Sims 4 – Today ended up being another “playing around in CAS” session – mostly because I spent a good chunk of the time before I played downloading a LOT of new clothes! Specifically, I downloaded the “Punk Pride,” “DIY Or Die,” and “Angsty Adolescence” fan stuff packs from Crypt O’Club on tumblr (to go with their “Creepy Creations” pack I downloaded previously); an “1890s working girl mini-set” of blouses, skirts, and an apron overlay from Vintage Simstress; the “Boldness Beckons” and “Authoritative Aristocrat” men’s suits from Historical Sims Life; and two sets of Victorian men’s day wear from Simmer Of The Dawn’s Victorian Collection. I thought the Crypt O’Club stuff would be good for the Coaster Crew (specifically Oblivion, I was struggling with some of their outfits before) and the Victorian stuff for the Valicer In The Dark versions of my Valicer trio. Had a lot of fun playing around with the custom content clothing and accessories and seeing what I liked on who – here’s some sample pictures (in clickable thumbnail form):
Here’s Th13teen, Oblivion, Rita, Smiler, Victor, and Alice showing off some of the Crypt O’Club stuff (along with some other items I’ve downloaded in the past – Oblivion and Th13teen’s pants are a different set, for example). I just couldn’t resist putting Alice in the corset dress, and when I saw some of the tattoos available with the set, they looked like something that Rita would be into. :) The stripes on her new crop-top punk vest are the lesbian flag, by the way, in case you were curious. And I HAD to put Smiler in those pants, since they remind me SO much of Agent Joytide’s outfit from the various Smiler Takeover videos I saw. :D
And here is a representative sample of the Victorian stuff! :) I really like those suits I got for Victor and Smiler – especially Victor’s, as with those pants, it’s about as close as I’ll get to his canon outfit! And Alice doesn’t look half-bad in the working girl’s set – though it occurs to me I forgot to put the apron overlay on it. Have to fix that later. :p But yeah, had a lot of fun playing around with these, and some of my older custom content too – gotta remember to use it more often! :)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike for the week, getting through the following –
A) The very end of Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Into The Deathlands!” Barnaby managed to successfully scam Ethelfrit’s Deathlands Scavengers by marking a fake location out far in the deathlands where the group could find the “stashed carriages” on their map, tempting them by telling them of all the goodies on said carriages, like the Shrek Lanthorns. The Scavengers were VERY excited by those, being big fans of Astor (Edvard only JUST started paying attention to what was going on then XD) – but they insisted Barnaby give them something valuable now before they headed off to find the goods. Barnaby, as per usual, ticked his load to produce a fine bottle of whiskey – and when the Scavengers said they were teetotal, claimed it was non-alcoholic, which is in fact very rare in Volisport and thus very valuable. XD So they took that and creepily crawled back into their hidden trapdoors, allowing the train to continue on unimpeded.
Smash cut to the group arriving back at Volisport, where they encountered a new problem – namely, how to get the train actually back INTO the Coalridge station so the Gut-Cutters could store it for them. Lilith’s attempt at a sensible idea – get the driver and the stoker to tell the officials inspecting everything coming into the train yard about the bridge being out and the lost carriages and such – unfortunately would have completely undone all their efforts to, you know, steal a locomotive (in a way that kept it off the books, anyway), so instead they went with Edvard’s plan –
Disguise it as a giant dog. XD Fortunately the train was carrying a lot of hay and sheepskins and eels that could be arranged to look like a giant dog, and when they encountered the inspectors, he promptly tried to pass himself off as traveling inventor Hieronymous “Big Dog” Bagshot, here to exhibit his big dog! Unfortunately, upon hearing his last name, the inspectors were all like “are you related to Cornelius Bagshot, the guy who disappeared recently” – and when Edvard attempted to go “oh, no, my last name is BagSHOW,” he accidentally changed his first name to “Cornelius” in the process. XD In the end, he just dropped some money on the ground for the officials to pick up, and they took the bribe happily. However, Luke informed them that was, in fact, the LAST of the Hobbyhorses’ cash, as all their scores, while good for the main plotline, hadn’t exactly been profitable for them. Which might be bad for them in the future. (As Jane put it, “I have four stress and no money.” Luke: “The escapism of roleplaying!” XD) For the moment, though, they’d achieved all their aims – namely, get a locomotive, get it back into Volisport without issue, and store it in the Gut-Cutters’ shed. All that remained was to drop off the train crew – the Rail Jacks, driver, and stoker – behind a tavern, and then see if the train driver – the only one who wasn’t clonked on the head or knocked out at any point, and who very definitely saw Barnaby’s face – would eventually squeal or not. Kasimir fired a warning shot at the guy to try and intimidate him during the drop-off, and Luke rolled a die to see if he would break –
And then ENDED THE EPISODE, refusing to tell us what he’d rolled. XD Which MIGHT be a good hint that yes, the train driver will be telling someone at some point, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? Next week – “The Fate Of The Dimmer Sisters!”
B) And a pair of Petey Plays It videos –
I. “10 Growing Together Objects You Need To Start Using | The Sims 4 Guide” – Petey listing five standout items from the Growing Together pack (such as the treehouse your Sims can build, or all the various children’s bicycles), and five items that need more love (like the suitcases Sims can take around as mobile dresses, or the splash pads for designing your own water parks) – plus two “honorable mentions” because he couldn’t help himself (the friendship bracelet kit, because of the cute interactions it enables, and the new games table, because it represented the new games Sims can play with the pack). Good stuff as always, and it’s nice to have some objects I might not otherwise think to use highlighted for me!
II. “Complete Guide To Off-The-Grid Living In The Sims 4” – Petey giving a guide on how you can live “Off-The-Grid” in Sims 4, with a special focus on doing so in Sulani as the challenge was introduced around the time of Island Living’s release. The guide is slightly out of date, having been created back when “Off-The-Grid” was a lot TRAIT instead of a challenge, but the basics still hold up, explaining what works and what doesn’t when you’re off the grid, how to get water, how to earn money and keep yourself entertained without electronics, and how to use Eco Lifestyle to do things like actually get a power surplus going so if you DO want to use a computer for a little while, you can. :p Nothing I didn’t already know from playing on a technically “Off-The-Grid” lot myself, but it filled in the last few minutes of my ride nicely!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has just accidentally implicated Nines in Grout’s murder (despite repeating a couple of times that “I only saw him coming out the front door, and he was acting weird”), and LaCroix, after letting her know the consequences, has just Dominated her into not talking about it with anyone else, especially the Anarchs, until he comes to his decision regarding the blood hunt. Which Alice is NOT happy about, as you might expect. It’s taking pretty much all she has not to try and stab him with his letter opener early. *pats her* Tomorrow, we handle him telling her about her new job – picking up the Ankaran Sarcophagus. At least that’s one step closer to getting her back to her haven and to Victor, who is getting very worried because he can somehow feel something is wrong with Alice. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one today, GrayStillPlay’s latest, “Upgrading tanks to Mechas in Hills of Steel,” aka Gray plays – well, Hills of Steel! This is a game where you start off as a scrub soldier in your scrub ordinary tank, fighting enemies on scrub Earth, and you must find ways to upgrade your tank to something more awesome so you can fight in more awesome locations, such as the Moon and Mars. (You yourself remain a scrub soldier, though you can at least earn rank upgrades.) You can do this by fighting enemies, collecting coins and gems, and slowly working your way through daily reward lootboxes and the like – or you can do things the Gray way, spend real money to buy a bunch of gems, and go straight for the cool tanks, like the Chonk with its big old gun and its circular saw! The Arachno, a tank that crawls along on spidery legs and has a laser minigun attached to the front! The Kraken, a tank that crawls along on squid tentacles and has a laser that it seems to charge via the mechanism of summoning a black hole! (Not to mention the tentacles it can make explode from the ground. . .) The Rex, a tank that is basically a quadruped T-Rex robot with a bite attack and a (strangely underpowered) nuke attached to its back! And the Immortal, a literal demon of a tank with a massive nasty flail (you know, that “spiky thing attached to a handle by a chain” weapon) and the ability to shower the world in meteors at will! Basically things went up to eleven for Gray and “Lt. Yeetington” very very fast once he started getting THOSE tanks in play! XD Ahh, it’s great to see him letting loose and taking out all his GTA Torture Board frustrations on innocent mobile games. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – three thread replies to take care of on Valice Multiverse from Brynlee Marie! Though one of them I couldn’t just reblog, as the stupid UI wouldn’t let me do so properly (it was a thread that started from an ask, which I think was the problem), so I ended up copying her reply into a new post and restarting the thread from there. *grumbles* Tumblr, why you gotta be like this sometimes. . .
Whew -- and now I can FINALLY go to bed. At least tomorrow isn't a cleaning Saturday. . .goals for tomorrow include getting a start on the Chill Valicer Save update for this upcoming week on Victor Luvs Alice; doing more store-related stuff with the Chill Valicer trio in Sims 4; watching some OXBox and OXtra stuff I stuck in my Watch Later; and writing some more "Londerland Bloodlines." Hopefully that is all achievable! Night all!
