Busy Busy Friday
Aug. 23rd, 2024 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, it was a surprisingly busy end-of-the-week for me today --
Work – Bit busier today than it’s been the rest of the week – I did the GL, I looked at the failed credit card payments, I took some phone calls (people looking for checks, checking on pledges and – related to the previous – updating their card’s expiration date), I did a reversal, I did a credit card payment, and I even did a tiny bit of roster maintenance. All while listening to my coworkers yap on in a very irritating manner. *shakehead* Well, out for the weekend now! Just a shame it’s a cleaning one...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through –
A) “I built 3 base game houses on one lot” by James Turner! One of his more recent building videos, this was inspired by something James saw on reddit, where another Simmer had commented on how much they liked how For Rent allowed them to cram more houses onto one lot, with an example of a neighborhood they’d renovated in Willow Creek. James decided “that is cool, actually” and decided to see how many “shotgun houses” (long, thin houses with an emphasis on airflow from the front to the back) he could cram onto the Steamlit Single lot over there – using only the money he had left over after his self-Sim Semaj bought the lot (which was $18,500) AND only the base game Build/Buy stuff. Turns out, with some very careful money management (such as not having multiple outdoor bins, or railings on the outdoor stairs, and using the cheapest stuff he could find in each category), he was able to build three of these houses on the lot – two linked, the third offset a little – fully furnish one, and partly furnish (aka put working bathrooms in) the other two. Which, frankly, is not bad – I wouldn’t have thought you could fit three damn houses on that tiny lot! Never mind actually build and furnish them for that amount of money. Though I guess he HAS had a lot of practice building tiny houses for his own Tiny Town challenge… Mainly, I am just amused that he ended up making the houses white, yellow, and red from the outside – aka mayo, mustard, and ketchup-colored. XD I dub thee Condiment Lane! (Which is definitely what I will be calling it if I download the lot. XD)
B) “Severance RECAP: Season 1” by Man of Recaps! Yes, since I am currently riding the New Valicer AU energy based on what I know about this TV show, I decided it would probably be a good idea to, you know, watch some stuff from it – and somebody’s recap of the first season seemed like a good bet. Admittedly, this was nothing I hadn’t learned already from reading the TV Tropes page and Wikipedia page and whatnot, but the dude did a decent job recapping, and it was nice to see actual clips of everything I’d read about. :) Good job, MoR!
2. Continue editing “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of”: Check – Alice has gotten Victor and Smiler past mooning over the tinker’s bench and alchemy set available in the workshop, and – after some discussion about whether it’s a good idea to go up there, how Victor came to forget his spiritbane charm, and how his parents are dicks – the trio are preparing to ascend to the very top of the tower! Where they are due to receive a pleasant surprise about its spectral occupant...
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus, as I also managed to wipe out the Watch Later with my extra free time today –
A) First up, this afternoon, we had the OXBoxtra lists of the week –
I. “7 Useless Pre-Order Bonuses You'd Definitely Want a Refund For” – Jane and Ellen (with off-screen Andy and a brief Mike appearance for a joke) talking about those bonuses you got for pre-ordering that were not exactly bonus-y. From Ghostwire: Tokyo offering special clothing bonuses for a game played almost entirely in first person; to Fallout: New Vegas giving players who pre-ordered from GameStop a gun that, if you dared tried to do something like add a silencer to it, turned into an exclamation point being carried on the character’s back because it had no modded model (though the developers did at least make a quick fix that just made it so the model never changed if you did mod it); to both Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League AND Anthem offering early access to the game (either in “demo” or “the game is finished we swear” form) to pre-orderers that resulted in those gamers encountering massive bugs and not getting the full amount of time that they paid for, these bonuses really belonged in the Recycle Bin. *shakes head* This is why I DON’T pre-order, people! It ain’t worth it!
II. “Top 10 Worst Videogame Movies Ranked From 'Worst' to 'Ultra Worst'” – Mike and Andy talking about the worst of the worst when it comes to video game movie adaptations! And no, not EVERY entry on the list was by the infamous Uwe Boll – just three of them. XD But yes, from the wreck that was the 2006 Alone In The Dark adaptation (one of the Uwe Boll efforts where no one was alone and, thanks to the explosions, it wasn’t that dark), to the infamous stupidity of the original 90s Super Mario Bros Movie (you know, the one with Bob Hoskins as “Mario Mario” that is actually a cyberpunk dystopia movie), to the brand new horror that was the Borderlands movie released this year (Andy was SO FUCKING MAD at it for making Jack Black unfunny), there have been a LOT of bad video game movies over the years. Though it’s worth noting that, no, Street Fighter: The Movie was NOT on the list – everyone loves Raul Julia’s M. Bison too much. As they should. :) (Its sequel The Legend Of Chun-Li, by contrast...)
B) Then we had the latest in Petey Plays It’s Super Sim Series – “I Made A Genius Academic Sim | Super Sim Series 11!” Which, as you might expect from the title, saw Tina back in university to become Foxbury’s most powerful academic – and also make up for the fact that she did not become the perfect college athlete last time. Because we can’t have Tina not being perfect, now can we? XD Anyway, this episode saw Tina –
I. Smash out TWO more degrees (mostly because, once you get your first degree, you only need to complete eight classes to get another – meaning you can do university in two weeks instead of three if you accept a full course load) – she chose Psychology and Economics and completed both as Distinguished Degrees With Honors over at Foxbury
II. Complete two more aspirations, Renaissance Sim (which she actually insta-completed before enrolling in uni for the Psychology degree because she’d already completed everything in it) and Academic (which she completed after finishing her Psychology degree and starting her Economics one, which involved very briefly becoming an Adjunct Professor in between university stints) and made good progress on a third, Bestselling Author (her goal being to write skillbooks with very mean titles to make people take an interest in them)
III. Max out another career, the Bodybuilder branch of the Athlete career (she did this right before starting her uni adventures again, mostly because she needed the cash while living on a largely-unfurnished lot in Newcrest with just a gemology table and a pizza oven)
IV. Become a Senior member in both the Foxbury Spirit Squad (during her Psychology studies) and Brainacs (during her Economics studies) organizations
V. FINALLY max out her “career” on the soccer team by becoming a playmaker and thus getting an in into the Professional Athlete branch of the Athlete career, yay~
VI. Make good progress on a couple of collections, namely the Lovestruck axolotls (by doing a LOT of fishing and hanging out in Ciudad Enmorada) and the MySim trophies (by buying a bunch of them at the flea market XD). However, she’s still struggling to pick up Finchwick Fair ribbons (perhaps because she keeps buying stuff to submit rather than submitting her own things), and annoyingly a game bug involving Sims moving into university house reset her progress on her frog and Moonwood Mill relics collections by marking anything she didn’t have a copy of in her inventory as “not found.” Bleh.
VII. Help celebrate Mars’s birthday as he became an elder, rekindling their friendship, then mourn him as he passed away during her time studying psychology at Foxbury (in her own special “juggling a soccer ball at the time” way)
VIII. Have a couple of steamy dates with her boyfriend Sergio...but also become close to one of her university roommates in her new university housing, because this woman thinks EVERYONE is in love with her – and if they aren’t yet, they WILL BE
IX. And bounce around from Newcrest to Oasis Springs to Willow Creek in between university stints – which I only mention because I think Petey may secretly be trying to get her to live in every available world at least for a little bit as well as all the usual Super Sim stuff. Fun!
So yeah, another busy episode for Tina! And she’s not done with the uni times yet, as the episode ended with her discovering and taking an interest in the mysterious Secret Society… I suspect we’ll be seeing Tina playing with sprites in episode #12!
C) Then this evening after game night (Parcheesi – Dad won the first game, I won the second) we went over to the Subs for Josh Way and “STREAM TIME: The People’s Joker and Hundreds of Beavers!” Which really should have been “Blu-Ray and Stream Time,” as he watched the former on a physical disc. XD But he did recommend both – The People’s Joker with some qualifications that it’s not just a weird Batman parody – it’s also references a lot of the New York improv scene (think SNL and similar) and is ALSO a heartfelt memoir about being trans, so there’s a lot of layers to pick through; Hundreds of Beavers with the main qualification of “this is a dumb goofy live-action Looney Tunes movie with some video game elements that perhaps goes on a touch too long.” XD So yeah – if you’re looking for musings on the trans experience given a Fair Use Parody coat of paint, or a silly comedy about a man versus – well, see the title – then these movies are for you!
D) And finally, we had GrayStillPlays and “Testing unethical experiments,” aka Gray plays more ALGODOO! This is one of those games that allows you to create your own levels, most of which are fairly cursed because the graphics tend to be some of the jankiest things you have ever set eyes on. Also it seems to have an odd obsession with either feeding people stuff or doing the whole “Mentos and coke” trick. Gray got through today –
I. A level where you must feed a giant (with weird almost photo-realistic teeth) things from the playground below, including people, benches, and slices of trees, pirate ship playgrounds, and bouncy houses (but don’t try to pull any people who are clinging to something, as they will vibrate at the speed of light)
II. A level where you must feed a businessman Coke and Mentos to cause explosions in his stomach – and outside his stomach, and everywhere else on the board because in this game Mentos just blow up whenever they touch a single molecule of soda XD
III. A level that was an elaborate series of marbles runs (with bouncers, spinners, and all sorts of neat stuff), with each level allowing you to eliminate a marble until there was only one winner – Gray initially was all for pink, but pink ended up being a total failchild (only making it toward like round 6 out of 9 simply because Gray refused to eliminate it until he had to), so Gray then rooted for red to win – which it did, whew. Couldn’t have ORANGE beating the board, after all! XD But it was a lot of fun, and very well made. :)
IV. A level that was just “you drop this nuclear bomb filled with yellow and red particles on this castle and watch it break apart” – well, simple is best sometimes XD
V. A level that was a “jet boat race” where you had to drive the world’s most drift-y jet boat through a bunch of buoys, collecting penalties for each one you bumped or missed – Gray was NOT GOOD at this and collected 55 penalties in the end XD
VI. And a level that was just stuffing a bunch of very explosive poppers down someone’s throat before setting off a bunch of framerate-reducing fireworks and doing the Coke-And-Mentos thing again with the poor guy’s friend on the other side of the board. Gray deliberately made things worse by cloning the fireworks and setting them all off at once, causing his computer to beg for mercy. :p
So yeah – that was – weird. But fun. XD I do enjoy when Gray plays goofy shit like this, it’s always good for a laugh.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – well, only one really NEEDED a check –
Victor Luvs Alice – My queue over here is good, and I got exactly one ask today regarding whether or not I have a TV Tropes account (I do not, for the record, I just go over there and read through the articles), so...yeah. That’s that.
Valice Multiverse – By contrast, I had a whole bunch of asks over here:
A) One from Toonsisters asking Alice and Smiler if Victor is actually scary when he gets sufficiently mad – VITD!Smiler was like “oh, he rarely gets like that” while Alice was like “can summon lightning and produce portals to the deep, so, yes” XD
B) One from the anon with the dream about performing Death Of A Salesman On Ice badly while naked in Secundus and then having marshmallow rain, graham cracker trees, and chocolate bar currency, telling Marty (who previously asked if the anon could be talked into wearing underwear so he didn’t have to see their “bits”) that they were a Eunuch – Marty was like “...did they really take everything?” while Victor was just “…” XD
C) And one from another anon looking for votes for some sort of election in Secundus, saying that if they won, they would take Secundus back to the good old days when “thunder lizards” got to eat all the upstart mammals – Alice reminded them that their voter base was made up largely of “upstart mammals” while Marty jokingly suggested to Doc they use the candidate to test out how far back the time machine can go XD So the queue for tomorrow is pretty good over there tonight.
Yeah, uh, lot going on, as you can see! But I'm all good now, so I should probably get to bed sooner rather than later. Got a full Cleaning Saturday tomorrow (as in cleaning AND monthly laundry) -- other plans include playing Sims 4 (I think I'm good to go with my mods, but I'm not sure if I'm feeling playing the Chill Valicer Save or if I want to do a bit more building -- we'll see what happens tomorrow); working more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" keeping up with Gray and Jon for my new Saturday Two; and seeing whatever I can get done over on tumblr. *shrug* Typical Cleaning Saturday stuff! Night all!
Work – Bit busier today than it’s been the rest of the week – I did the GL, I looked at the failed credit card payments, I took some phone calls (people looking for checks, checking on pledges and – related to the previous – updating their card’s expiration date), I did a reversal, I did a credit card payment, and I even did a tiny bit of roster maintenance. All while listening to my coworkers yap on in a very irritating manner. *shakehead* Well, out for the weekend now! Just a shame it’s a cleaning one...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through –
A) “I built 3 base game houses on one lot” by James Turner! One of his more recent building videos, this was inspired by something James saw on reddit, where another Simmer had commented on how much they liked how For Rent allowed them to cram more houses onto one lot, with an example of a neighborhood they’d renovated in Willow Creek. James decided “that is cool, actually” and decided to see how many “shotgun houses” (long, thin houses with an emphasis on airflow from the front to the back) he could cram onto the Steamlit Single lot over there – using only the money he had left over after his self-Sim Semaj bought the lot (which was $18,500) AND only the base game Build/Buy stuff. Turns out, with some very careful money management (such as not having multiple outdoor bins, or railings on the outdoor stairs, and using the cheapest stuff he could find in each category), he was able to build three of these houses on the lot – two linked, the third offset a little – fully furnish one, and partly furnish (aka put working bathrooms in) the other two. Which, frankly, is not bad – I wouldn’t have thought you could fit three damn houses on that tiny lot! Never mind actually build and furnish them for that amount of money. Though I guess he HAS had a lot of practice building tiny houses for his own Tiny Town challenge… Mainly, I am just amused that he ended up making the houses white, yellow, and red from the outside – aka mayo, mustard, and ketchup-colored. XD I dub thee Condiment Lane! (Which is definitely what I will be calling it if I download the lot. XD)
B) “Severance RECAP: Season 1” by Man of Recaps! Yes, since I am currently riding the New Valicer AU energy based on what I know about this TV show, I decided it would probably be a good idea to, you know, watch some stuff from it – and somebody’s recap of the first season seemed like a good bet. Admittedly, this was nothing I hadn’t learned already from reading the TV Tropes page and Wikipedia page and whatnot, but the dude did a decent job recapping, and it was nice to see actual clips of everything I’d read about. :) Good job, MoR!
2. Continue editing “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of”: Check – Alice has gotten Victor and Smiler past mooning over the tinker’s bench and alchemy set available in the workshop, and – after some discussion about whether it’s a good idea to go up there, how Victor came to forget his spiritbane charm, and how his parents are dicks – the trio are preparing to ascend to the very top of the tower! Where they are due to receive a pleasant surprise about its spectral occupant...
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus, as I also managed to wipe out the Watch Later with my extra free time today –
A) First up, this afternoon, we had the OXBoxtra lists of the week –
I. “7 Useless Pre-Order Bonuses You'd Definitely Want a Refund For” – Jane and Ellen (with off-screen Andy and a brief Mike appearance for a joke) talking about those bonuses you got for pre-ordering that were not exactly bonus-y. From Ghostwire: Tokyo offering special clothing bonuses for a game played almost entirely in first person; to Fallout: New Vegas giving players who pre-ordered from GameStop a gun that, if you dared tried to do something like add a silencer to it, turned into an exclamation point being carried on the character’s back because it had no modded model (though the developers did at least make a quick fix that just made it so the model never changed if you did mod it); to both Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League AND Anthem offering early access to the game (either in “demo” or “the game is finished we swear” form) to pre-orderers that resulted in those gamers encountering massive bugs and not getting the full amount of time that they paid for, these bonuses really belonged in the Recycle Bin. *shakes head* This is why I DON’T pre-order, people! It ain’t worth it!
II. “Top 10 Worst Videogame Movies Ranked From 'Worst' to 'Ultra Worst'” – Mike and Andy talking about the worst of the worst when it comes to video game movie adaptations! And no, not EVERY entry on the list was by the infamous Uwe Boll – just three of them. XD But yes, from the wreck that was the 2006 Alone In The Dark adaptation (one of the Uwe Boll efforts where no one was alone and, thanks to the explosions, it wasn’t that dark), to the infamous stupidity of the original 90s Super Mario Bros Movie (you know, the one with Bob Hoskins as “Mario Mario” that is actually a cyberpunk dystopia movie), to the brand new horror that was the Borderlands movie released this year (Andy was SO FUCKING MAD at it for making Jack Black unfunny), there have been a LOT of bad video game movies over the years. Though it’s worth noting that, no, Street Fighter: The Movie was NOT on the list – everyone loves Raul Julia’s M. Bison too much. As they should. :) (Its sequel The Legend Of Chun-Li, by contrast...)
B) Then we had the latest in Petey Plays It’s Super Sim Series – “I Made A Genius Academic Sim | Super Sim Series 11!” Which, as you might expect from the title, saw Tina back in university to become Foxbury’s most powerful academic – and also make up for the fact that she did not become the perfect college athlete last time. Because we can’t have Tina not being perfect, now can we? XD Anyway, this episode saw Tina –
I. Smash out TWO more degrees (mostly because, once you get your first degree, you only need to complete eight classes to get another – meaning you can do university in two weeks instead of three if you accept a full course load) – she chose Psychology and Economics and completed both as Distinguished Degrees With Honors over at Foxbury
II. Complete two more aspirations, Renaissance Sim (which she actually insta-completed before enrolling in uni for the Psychology degree because she’d already completed everything in it) and Academic (which she completed after finishing her Psychology degree and starting her Economics one, which involved very briefly becoming an Adjunct Professor in between university stints) and made good progress on a third, Bestselling Author (her goal being to write skillbooks with very mean titles to make people take an interest in them)
III. Max out another career, the Bodybuilder branch of the Athlete career (she did this right before starting her uni adventures again, mostly because she needed the cash while living on a largely-unfurnished lot in Newcrest with just a gemology table and a pizza oven)
IV. Become a Senior member in both the Foxbury Spirit Squad (during her Psychology studies) and Brainacs (during her Economics studies) organizations
V. FINALLY max out her “career” on the soccer team by becoming a playmaker and thus getting an in into the Professional Athlete branch of the Athlete career, yay~
VI. Make good progress on a couple of collections, namely the Lovestruck axolotls (by doing a LOT of fishing and hanging out in Ciudad Enmorada) and the MySim trophies (by buying a bunch of them at the flea market XD). However, she’s still struggling to pick up Finchwick Fair ribbons (perhaps because she keeps buying stuff to submit rather than submitting her own things), and annoyingly a game bug involving Sims moving into university house reset her progress on her frog and Moonwood Mill relics collections by marking anything she didn’t have a copy of in her inventory as “not found.” Bleh.
VII. Help celebrate Mars’s birthday as he became an elder, rekindling their friendship, then mourn him as he passed away during her time studying psychology at Foxbury (in her own special “juggling a soccer ball at the time” way)
VIII. Have a couple of steamy dates with her boyfriend Sergio...but also become close to one of her university roommates in her new university housing, because this woman thinks EVERYONE is in love with her – and if they aren’t yet, they WILL BE
IX. And bounce around from Newcrest to Oasis Springs to Willow Creek in between university stints – which I only mention because I think Petey may secretly be trying to get her to live in every available world at least for a little bit as well as all the usual Super Sim stuff. Fun!
So yeah, another busy episode for Tina! And she’s not done with the uni times yet, as the episode ended with her discovering and taking an interest in the mysterious Secret Society… I suspect we’ll be seeing Tina playing with sprites in episode #12!
C) Then this evening after game night (Parcheesi – Dad won the first game, I won the second) we went over to the Subs for Josh Way and “STREAM TIME: The People’s Joker and Hundreds of Beavers!” Which really should have been “Blu-Ray and Stream Time,” as he watched the former on a physical disc. XD But he did recommend both – The People’s Joker with some qualifications that it’s not just a weird Batman parody – it’s also references a lot of the New York improv scene (think SNL and similar) and is ALSO a heartfelt memoir about being trans, so there’s a lot of layers to pick through; Hundreds of Beavers with the main qualification of “this is a dumb goofy live-action Looney Tunes movie with some video game elements that perhaps goes on a touch too long.” XD So yeah – if you’re looking for musings on the trans experience given a Fair Use Parody coat of paint, or a silly comedy about a man versus – well, see the title – then these movies are for you!
D) And finally, we had GrayStillPlays and “Testing unethical experiments,” aka Gray plays more ALGODOO! This is one of those games that allows you to create your own levels, most of which are fairly cursed because the graphics tend to be some of the jankiest things you have ever set eyes on. Also it seems to have an odd obsession with either feeding people stuff or doing the whole “Mentos and coke” trick. Gray got through today –
I. A level where you must feed a giant (with weird almost photo-realistic teeth) things from the playground below, including people, benches, and slices of trees, pirate ship playgrounds, and bouncy houses (but don’t try to pull any people who are clinging to something, as they will vibrate at the speed of light)
II. A level where you must feed a businessman Coke and Mentos to cause explosions in his stomach – and outside his stomach, and everywhere else on the board because in this game Mentos just blow up whenever they touch a single molecule of soda XD
III. A level that was an elaborate series of marbles runs (with bouncers, spinners, and all sorts of neat stuff), with each level allowing you to eliminate a marble until there was only one winner – Gray initially was all for pink, but pink ended up being a total failchild (only making it toward like round 6 out of 9 simply because Gray refused to eliminate it until he had to), so Gray then rooted for red to win – which it did, whew. Couldn’t have ORANGE beating the board, after all! XD But it was a lot of fun, and very well made. :)
IV. A level that was just “you drop this nuclear bomb filled with yellow and red particles on this castle and watch it break apart” – well, simple is best sometimes XD
V. A level that was a “jet boat race” where you had to drive the world’s most drift-y jet boat through a bunch of buoys, collecting penalties for each one you bumped or missed – Gray was NOT GOOD at this and collected 55 penalties in the end XD
VI. And a level that was just stuffing a bunch of very explosive poppers down someone’s throat before setting off a bunch of framerate-reducing fireworks and doing the Coke-And-Mentos thing again with the poor guy’s friend on the other side of the board. Gray deliberately made things worse by cloning the fireworks and setting them all off at once, causing his computer to beg for mercy. :p
So yeah – that was – weird. But fun. XD I do enjoy when Gray plays goofy shit like this, it’s always good for a laugh.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – well, only one really NEEDED a check –
Victor Luvs Alice – My queue over here is good, and I got exactly one ask today regarding whether or not I have a TV Tropes account (I do not, for the record, I just go over there and read through the articles), so...yeah. That’s that.
Valice Multiverse – By contrast, I had a whole bunch of asks over here:
A) One from Toonsisters asking Alice and Smiler if Victor is actually scary when he gets sufficiently mad – VITD!Smiler was like “oh, he rarely gets like that” while Alice was like “can summon lightning and produce portals to the deep, so, yes” XD
B) One from the anon with the dream about performing Death Of A Salesman On Ice badly while naked in Secundus and then having marshmallow rain, graham cracker trees, and chocolate bar currency, telling Marty (who previously asked if the anon could be talked into wearing underwear so he didn’t have to see their “bits”) that they were a Eunuch – Marty was like “...did they really take everything?” while Victor was just “…” XD
C) And one from another anon looking for votes for some sort of election in Secundus, saying that if they won, they would take Secundus back to the good old days when “thunder lizards” got to eat all the upstart mammals – Alice reminded them that their voter base was made up largely of “upstart mammals” while Marty jokingly suggested to Doc they use the candidate to test out how far back the time machine can go XD So the queue for tomorrow is pretty good over there tonight.
Yeah, uh, lot going on, as you can see! But I'm all good now, so I should probably get to bed sooner rather than later. Got a full Cleaning Saturday tomorrow (as in cleaning AND monthly laundry) -- other plans include playing Sims 4 (I think I'm good to go with my mods, but I'm not sure if I'm feeling playing the Chill Valicer Save or if I want to do a bit more building -- we'll see what happens tomorrow); working more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" keeping up with Gray and Jon for my new Saturday Two; and seeing whatever I can get done over on tumblr. *shrug* Typical Cleaning Saturday stuff! Night all!
