Fairly Shitty Wednesday
Jul. 10th, 2024 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickHad to kill more bugs in my room this morning, AND when I booted up my computer, I found that my damn EA Play app had gotten uninstalled, likely due to the fact that my computer had an update last night. *grumbles* I've fixed the problem and reinstalled the app (and took advantage of the opportunity to make a much-needed backup of my computer), but still. It was not a pleasant way to start the morning. And the rest of my day wasn't exactly great either --
Work – “Eh” day at work – it was another mostly quiet day, though I did have a pledge billing QC file to go over, which lead me to find some fun credit card nonsense that needed to be fixed. Plus a payment that needed to be moved. All while having to listen to my coworkers prattle on about politics and brain-eating microbes and the like. *sigh* And then the ride home was absolutely awful and took like a half-hour for no particular reason I could see. So yeah – not great.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, pedaling through the following –
A) The end of the GrayStillPlays compilation “I made driving 1000x more dangerous!” Featuring the last few minutes of Draw & Break It! (which featured Gray drawing more ridiculous cars and somehow managing to go lightspeed with a brain-mobile), and the entirety of Human Vehicle (that ridiculous “runner” game where you have to create vehicles out of PEOPLE – I’m seriously, every vehicle in the game is made out of people twisting themselves up to become tires, chassis, frame, wings, propellers – all sorts of stuff. Gray found it both delightful and disturbing). Good, if very weird, stuff!
B) The beginning of “I completed the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 8” by James Turner! The grand finale of the Every Occult Challenge series, with James just having to find a way to make his self-Sim Semaj temporarily a skeleton to complete all of his occult-themed goals! The first ten or so minutes, though, were dedicated to giving their new Night Wraith ghost friend a place to stay in the house (James used room-moving fuckery to build him a little tower of his own off the side of Bailey’s tower – his, of course, was the dark and depressing version full of random junk); getting Bailey uncursed (since they now have a permanent Night Wraith to bug her if necessary); and figuring out how to get everyone to Selvadorada (turns out Lou was VERY INTENT on going to college and wasn’t about to vacation until James made him withdraw from the term). I ended with the gang having freshly arrived at the big research station rental by the entrance to the jungle (as that was the only rentable lot with eight beds) – we’ll see how their adventures on vacation go, and how long it takes Vlad, resident archaeologist, to get the relic James needs to become a skeleton, over the next two days!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – went over the bit where Skelter asks Alice to make Patty, the world’s most annoying ghoul, “disappear” today. Alice, who recently reconnected with the ghoul she herself accidentally abandoned, feels a lot sorrier for Patty (whose “sugar daddy” apparently just up and vanished) than she does for the Anarchs who keep giving her shit for working with the Camarilla when she doesn’t have much of a choice, but Cheshire pointed out that Skelter only asked for a disappearance, and if she couches whatever she does to Patty in equally vague terms… But that’s for a future chapter! Right now, Alice is heading home to wrap things up by chatting with Victor and seeing how he’s doing. Should be sorted by the end of the week!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half check – thanks to starting a little late, I had to leave Josh Way’s latest for tomorrow and concentrated on GrayStillPlays’s latest instead – “Which car tracks are best in GTA 5?” Another “ranked challenge” Torture Board, Gray was tasked with putting a variety of vehicles that run on tracks – from a regular tank to the remote-control mini-tank, a Half-Track truck to a Scarab speeder, a pick-up frame mounted on tank treads to a janky half-melted mess of a tracked nightmare, a bulldozer to a tiny Playskool car with treads – through a variety of challenges designed to test those tracks. Each winner of a challenge got a point, and whoever got the most points was the overall champion! The challenges were –
I. Which Tracks Can Climb Up The Steepest Incline? – Gray had to make it up three inclines of 60, 69, and 75 degrees respectively, getting teleported to the next track at the top of each one. Oh, and he had to dodge Alex’s Weebmill on the final incline for good measure. Most of the cars struggled to make it up the FIRST incline, though some did better than Gray expected – for example, the bulldozer managed to get halfway up the 60 degree ramp on sheer torque (despite being the slowest vehicle available), and – of all things – the PLAYSKOOL TREADS CAR actually almost COMPLETED THE DAMN CHALLENGE, being JUST unable to get up the lip at the very top of the 75 degree ramp to reach the teleporter. The ultimate winner, though, was the Scarab, which had the speed and stability to make it up all three inclines without issue (well, other than occasionally overshooting the target XD).
II. Which Tracks Are Better For LEGO Speedbumps? – Gray had to navigate a course of three sets of LEGO-themed speedbumps – first a few standard square pieces, then a tightrope of gradually-rising LEGO buttons, and finally a bit of road covered with flat LEGO pieces designed to knock you all over the place – all within 50 seconds. This one was all about having decent suspension and speed – a jump capability would only get you so far, as Gray found out in the remote control tank. The proper tank and the Scarab both did pretty well, but couldn’t QUITE keep enough speed to get to the end before the wall came up, so the win this time went to the Half-Track, which bounced around a lot but managed to JUST get over the line before running out of time. Skin of your teeth win is still a win!
III. Which Tracks Can Push Better? – Gray had to push three shipping containers out of the invisible boxes they were contained in before the invisible walls came back up, then shove them to the end of the platform they were on so he could drop them in a notch and turn them into a ramp that he could use to leap to the next area. He had six seconds on the first container of LEGO pegs; eight seconds on the second container with a smart car; and ten seconds on the third container with two big old tanks of fluid in them (gas? I’m not sure). Gray THOUGHT this was going to be a shoo-in for the bulldozer until he realized that the challenge involved jumping as well as pushing – and when he tried the Scarab and the Half-Track, the next most likely contenders, they flunked out at the third hurdle. Meaning our winner here was the Classic Tank, with its perfect marriage of weight for shoving and speed for jumping!
IV. Which Tracks Are Better For Dune Part 3: Stiff Sands? – Gray had to make his way over the bumpy sand dunes that Alex had built in front of the win (complete with a discount sandworm or two popping up every so often!) in 55 seconds or get trapped behind the wall. This, naturally, came down to which one of the Classic Tank, Scarab, and Half-Track could actually make the trip in time –
And as it turns out, neither the Tank nor the Scarab had the suspension to deal with the nonsense bumps of the dunes. Meaning we had the Half-Track for the second point and the win! As Gray put it, apparently the best set of tracks are half-tracks. :p
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about tonight, though as usual the dash took longer to catch up on than I wanted. And I had a bit of a hard time concentrating too...still, I got the link to Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” queued up for Friday, and the start of my Song Saturday post (featuring “Fearless” by the Goo Goo Dolls) queued up for Saturday! I’ll have to finish that one off tomorrow, but at least it’s in there.
Whew -- I am ready to hit the sheets, let me tell you. Hopefully Thursday will be an improvement over today...night all!
Work – “Eh” day at work – it was another mostly quiet day, though I did have a pledge billing QC file to go over, which lead me to find some fun credit card nonsense that needed to be fixed. Plus a payment that needed to be moved. All while having to listen to my coworkers prattle on about politics and brain-eating microbes and the like. *sigh* And then the ride home was absolutely awful and took like a half-hour for no particular reason I could see. So yeah – not great.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, pedaling through the following –
A) The end of the GrayStillPlays compilation “I made driving 1000x more dangerous!” Featuring the last few minutes of Draw & Break It! (which featured Gray drawing more ridiculous cars and somehow managing to go lightspeed with a brain-mobile), and the entirety of Human Vehicle (that ridiculous “runner” game where you have to create vehicles out of PEOPLE – I’m seriously, every vehicle in the game is made out of people twisting themselves up to become tires, chassis, frame, wings, propellers – all sorts of stuff. Gray found it both delightful and disturbing). Good, if very weird, stuff!
B) The beginning of “I completed the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 8” by James Turner! The grand finale of the Every Occult Challenge series, with James just having to find a way to make his self-Sim Semaj temporarily a skeleton to complete all of his occult-themed goals! The first ten or so minutes, though, were dedicated to giving their new Night Wraith ghost friend a place to stay in the house (James used room-moving fuckery to build him a little tower of his own off the side of Bailey’s tower – his, of course, was the dark and depressing version full of random junk); getting Bailey uncursed (since they now have a permanent Night Wraith to bug her if necessary); and figuring out how to get everyone to Selvadorada (turns out Lou was VERY INTENT on going to college and wasn’t about to vacation until James made him withdraw from the term). I ended with the gang having freshly arrived at the big research station rental by the entrance to the jungle (as that was the only rentable lot with eight beds) – we’ll see how their adventures on vacation go, and how long it takes Vlad, resident archaeologist, to get the relic James needs to become a skeleton, over the next two days!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – went over the bit where Skelter asks Alice to make Patty, the world’s most annoying ghoul, “disappear” today. Alice, who recently reconnected with the ghoul she herself accidentally abandoned, feels a lot sorrier for Patty (whose “sugar daddy” apparently just up and vanished) than she does for the Anarchs who keep giving her shit for working with the Camarilla when she doesn’t have much of a choice, but Cheshire pointed out that Skelter only asked for a disappearance, and if she couches whatever she does to Patty in equally vague terms… But that’s for a future chapter! Right now, Alice is heading home to wrap things up by chatting with Victor and seeing how he’s doing. Should be sorted by the end of the week!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half check – thanks to starting a little late, I had to leave Josh Way’s latest for tomorrow and concentrated on GrayStillPlays’s latest instead – “Which car tracks are best in GTA 5?” Another “ranked challenge” Torture Board, Gray was tasked with putting a variety of vehicles that run on tracks – from a regular tank to the remote-control mini-tank, a Half-Track truck to a Scarab speeder, a pick-up frame mounted on tank treads to a janky half-melted mess of a tracked nightmare, a bulldozer to a tiny Playskool car with treads – through a variety of challenges designed to test those tracks. Each winner of a challenge got a point, and whoever got the most points was the overall champion! The challenges were –
I. Which Tracks Can Climb Up The Steepest Incline? – Gray had to make it up three inclines of 60, 69, and 75 degrees respectively, getting teleported to the next track at the top of each one. Oh, and he had to dodge Alex’s Weebmill on the final incline for good measure. Most of the cars struggled to make it up the FIRST incline, though some did better than Gray expected – for example, the bulldozer managed to get halfway up the 60 degree ramp on sheer torque (despite being the slowest vehicle available), and – of all things – the PLAYSKOOL TREADS CAR actually almost COMPLETED THE DAMN CHALLENGE, being JUST unable to get up the lip at the very top of the 75 degree ramp to reach the teleporter. The ultimate winner, though, was the Scarab, which had the speed and stability to make it up all three inclines without issue (well, other than occasionally overshooting the target XD).
II. Which Tracks Are Better For LEGO Speedbumps? – Gray had to navigate a course of three sets of LEGO-themed speedbumps – first a few standard square pieces, then a tightrope of gradually-rising LEGO buttons, and finally a bit of road covered with flat LEGO pieces designed to knock you all over the place – all within 50 seconds. This one was all about having decent suspension and speed – a jump capability would only get you so far, as Gray found out in the remote control tank. The proper tank and the Scarab both did pretty well, but couldn’t QUITE keep enough speed to get to the end before the wall came up, so the win this time went to the Half-Track, which bounced around a lot but managed to JUST get over the line before running out of time. Skin of your teeth win is still a win!
III. Which Tracks Can Push Better? – Gray had to push three shipping containers out of the invisible boxes they were contained in before the invisible walls came back up, then shove them to the end of the platform they were on so he could drop them in a notch and turn them into a ramp that he could use to leap to the next area. He had six seconds on the first container of LEGO pegs; eight seconds on the second container with a smart car; and ten seconds on the third container with two big old tanks of fluid in them (gas? I’m not sure). Gray THOUGHT this was going to be a shoo-in for the bulldozer until he realized that the challenge involved jumping as well as pushing – and when he tried the Scarab and the Half-Track, the next most likely contenders, they flunked out at the third hurdle. Meaning our winner here was the Classic Tank, with its perfect marriage of weight for shoving and speed for jumping!
IV. Which Tracks Are Better For Dune Part 3: Stiff Sands? – Gray had to make his way over the bumpy sand dunes that Alex had built in front of the win (complete with a discount sandworm or two popping up every so often!) in 55 seconds or get trapped behind the wall. This, naturally, came down to which one of the Classic Tank, Scarab, and Half-Track could actually make the trip in time –
And as it turns out, neither the Tank nor the Scarab had the suspension to deal with the nonsense bumps of the dunes. Meaning we had the Half-Track for the second point and the win! As Gray put it, apparently the best set of tracks are half-tracks. :p
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about tonight, though as usual the dash took longer to catch up on than I wanted. And I had a bit of a hard time concentrating too...still, I got the link to Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” queued up for Friday, and the start of my Song Saturday post (featuring “Fearless” by the Goo Goo Dolls) queued up for Saturday! I’ll have to finish that one off tomorrow, but at least it’s in there.
Whew -- I am ready to hit the sheets, let me tell you. Hopefully Thursday will be an improvement over today...night all!
