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Good Chance of No Work Tomorrow
Jan. 31st, 2021 11:10 pmReason? A snowstorm that was supposed to come in midday is now apparently coming in in the morning, and it's supposed to get bad by 10:30 AM. Pretty much all the schools and other places have closed, but there's no sign yet on the list that the Diocese has joined them. Granted, they might declare it a work-from-home day instead. . . I'll just check again when I get up tomorrow morning, I guess. My parents are already telling me I ought to call in, though. I guess we'll see what happens when I get up! I've got my laptop, I can do at least a FEW things if they want me to. . .
Anyway, how'd I do on the old productivity front today?
1. Watch the three OXBox/OXtra videos in my Watch Later, Call Me Kevin, and Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check! Was vaguely hoping I could maybe fit in GrayStillPlays, but no dice. Ah well – still got the list item sorted, yay!
A) Started with the OXBox and OXtra, including –
1. “The Medium: THE NEW SILENT HILL? (The Medium Gameplay)” – basically exactly what it says on the tin, Andy and Jane playing a quick teaser of new horror game The Medium. Starring psychic Marianne, friends to children named Sadness and with the ability to operate in two worlds at once! No, seriously, this is a gameplay mechanic – sometimes the game will go split-screen, with Marianne in both the real world and the rather more fleshy spirit world, and you’ll have to navigate both to get to your goal. And sometimes even do an out-of-body experience to go through the spirit world to get somewhere you can’t get in the real world – just watch the timer and don’t let yourself fade away! Andy and Jane seemed to quite enjoy their trip to not-Silent Hill, with its flesh corridors, one-armed masked children, and killer moths. And extremely haunted shoes. XD But it does genuinely look pretty cool, so I shouldn’t make too much fun. :p
2. “7 Bosses That Were Way Scarier in the Remake: Commenter Edition” – a follow-up to a list about bosses made scarier in the remakes of their respective games. Generally through the medium of “more eyes and mouths and rotting flesh, please!” Or, in the case of one monster that is, in Gabe Newell’s own words on the monsters of the original Half-Life, “giving the giant armored spider with a testicle to the fans to remake please!” Though the creepiest one was definitely the Gravemind from Halo 2: Anniversary – from “Audrey 2” jokes to some horrible flesh flower thing with multiple mouths. Eeeep. O.o T-talk about a glow-up, huh?
3. “7 Annoying Things Games Fixed with Easy Solutions” – Basically, little annoyances in games, and how some games raise the bar in handling them. Like games that have checkpoints in the middle of big multi-part boss fights! Or games that have linked storage chests for all your gear, which may be scattered all over the game world. Or games that TELL YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GO YES THANK YOU PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS SORT OF THINGS ARE JERKS I GET LOST EASILY. ...You can tell which one I’m passionate about. XD (Well, that and inventory management – why do you think I have a number of mods to help with carry capacity in Fallout 4?
B) Then straight on to Call Me Kevin – and yay, more GTA V Chaos Mod, Twitch Chat edition! :D Kevin managed to complete THREE whole missions this time, despite Twitch Chat’s best efforts. AND, more importantly, he managed to punch out Griefer Jesus before he could start griefing. Blessed stream highlights there! :D But yeah, poor Kevin had to deal with people inverting gravity while sticking him in first person, spawning angry clones of his player character to fight him, dropping tugs on top of him in cutscenes, and making him so famous on the hunt for Bigfoot that the combined efforts of all the wildlife mobbing him launched him into the sky on a cushion of boulders. XD Hilarious as always! :)
C) And of course, this evening, we had our usual – Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO episode! Today he did Fort Hagen, which was super tense, given all the synths and turrets and whatnot he had to face. Jon spent most of the video laying mines, creeping about, taking the sneakiest of sneak attacks, and at the first available opportunity, tossing his Turret Total Hack tape into a terminal and making them all his friends. Which he then blew up as Finalley doesn’t really DO friendship. XD The worst part was when he finally made it down to Kellogg himself – you see, the game does something nice here and gives you the opportunity to grab yourself a Fat Man and mini-nuke from the armory if you don’t fancy actually having a conversation with Kellogg. Jon happily took advantage of that, with the plan being he’d nuke Kellogg from the corridor (thus being well out of range), then lay down a bottlecap mine to take out whichever Synth Strider bodyguard survived the blast while he retreated to a better vantage point for a shot.
One of the Striders ended up standing right in front of the doorway, and thus right in front of Kellogg. Blocking Jon’s shot. Cue Jon having to ENTER THE ROOM, loop around all the way to the OTHER side to get far enough away, and throw the mine down between Kellogg and the Strider that wouldn’t move as a failsafe. He did some Psycho-Jet, critted the shot, and – BOOM! One dead Kellogg, two dead Striders, one uninjured and still-just-Lethargic Finalley. Jon was openly relieved and couldn’t believe his luck. He collected what he needed, went out to watch the arrival of the Prydwen, then started back to base –
And ran into the Brotherhood along the way – a small patrol attacking some Gunners near the water plant a bunch of Super Mutants hold. Jon helped them out by killing a Legendary (which had an – okay drop in a Rapid Institute Rifle), then, for some reason, decided to antagonize the Super Mutants under the rationale that he had help from the surviving members of the squad.
Super Mutants had a missile launcher. Cue Jon, through SHEER LUCK, avoiding being exploded by a missile and legging it while swearing (lightly – he only says stuff like “fuck” when he’s startled by radstags XD). And then, just when you thought he was out of the woods –
Raiders attacking Oberland Station. One in power armor. Jon ran for it, but one of them got a shot. So he made it through the super-plot-important Fort Hagen without a scratch, and dodged a Super Mutant’s missile launcher – and a random raider at Oberland takes 16.53 health off his total. The YOLO run in a nutshell, everybody! Poor, stressed-out Jon ended back at base, saying that he needed to have a serious think about the order he wished to do things in going forward! XD Come on, Jon, I believe in you! Make it through the base game campaign, at least!
2. EITHER figure out what I'm doing with Fallout 4 (basically, does the fucked-up modded situation require a reinstall) OR just try to finish Untitled Goose Game (complete the other two "quickly!" lists): Check for the latter in the “just try” sense – I fired up UGG before and after lunch, but due to the final to-do lists kind of depending on the humans doing the exact right thing at the exact right time, I was only able to complete the “Back Gardens, Quickly” achievement and thus that to-do list item. Gave the pub a couple of tries, but no dice – though I did at least discover that stealing the pint glass is going to be much easier! Since the back gate is open now, I can just go through the back and drop it in the water there instead of trying to get out the front without breaking the accursed thing. Right now, trying to get the candle for “set the table” is looking like the hardest bit, since that’s near the front of the pub where I have both the publican AND her husband with potential eyes on me. . .
3.Get in a workout: Check! Did a slightly-more-intense-than-usual round on the bike, and finished episode 47 of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough while I was at it! Caught up with Grills, Nick, and Longfellow as the latter cleared out the last of the ghouls in the National Campground, fulfilling his obligations to the Brotherhood and Callie back at Far Harbor’s main port in one fell swoop. After that the group pushed onward, encountering along the way a pair of Young Gulpers that were pretty damn tough – admittedly, one of them was a Legendary, but Jon was still surprised. Legendary had a Relentless Walking Cane on them, too – poor Jon, he either gets great drops or trash ones. At any rate, they had a brief run-in with the Children of Atom that marked a new location on Grills’s map, then finally reached Acadia, where Longfellow dropped them off and offered up his cabin as a place to relax once they were done. Grills told him he’d be by later, and went in to meet with DiMA, Nick’s “brother” and the atom-punkier of the two Generation 2 prototypes. He’s a pretty interesting character – very soothing voice, very calm and measured way of speaking. . .I already know that he’s something of a hypocrite, but I like him as a character. His and Nick’s first interaction was pretty fascinating too. Totally prepared to believe him when it comes to their history, if only because I know the Institute and leaving one prototype to develop their own personality while constantly rewriting the other sounds like the kind of bullshit they’d do. Nick seemed to need some time with this information, though – Grills was nice and told him they’d talk later, when he was ready.
I also discovered, to my surprise, that the “are you a synth” question comes up literally in the first conversation you have with DiMA. Jon had Grills admit to wondering, though personally – it’s an interesting idea, yeah, but the way it’s structured, it literally only works as a joke on the fact that your character’s first memory would have to be the tutorial, because, well, video game character. The minute you bring in unique Sole Survivors who could have other answers in a fanfic situation (like my own Victor). . . *shrug* But yeah, if you want to play around with the idea (I know the theory is a popular one), it’s a good start, at least! Might work best with a Sole Survivor who’s already wondered about having amnesia. . . Grills also admitted he was with the Brotherhood, but promised to play nice for the moment, if only because Jon really wanted to do the Eddie Winter stuff with Nick.
Speaking of which, guess what came up right after Grills stopped talking with DiMA? :D I really like how this comes about – how Nick admits to feeling like a machine playing at being a man, and how he just wants to put this to rest to clear out some of Original Nick’s old demons. Including the death of Jenny, Original Nick’s fiancee, which he only just remembers. Yeah, I know, Fridging The Love Interest is a badly overused backstory in FO4, but Nick’s voice actor really sells it, so. . . At any rate, Nick told Grills that he knows Eddie got ghoulified early in an attempt to live forever, and that he knows where the guy’s bunker is, but they need to collect all his “Winter’s End” holotapes to get the code to crack it. Grills already has half, so good start! :) And so we ended with Grills refueling and preparing for a sleep, while Jon talked about his Far Harbor plans. Namely, he’s gonna play nice with everyone right now. . .but there’s a good chance he’ll be taking a break midway through to do the Winters quest, then come back to the Island and be a proper Brotherhood soldier. I expect to be appalled and angry with the BOS, as I usually am whenever Jon shows off some of their faction-specific gameplay. Techno-racists.
4. Write something for this week's Wednesday Sims-themed post on Victor Luvs Alice (I'm thinking some ideas for my VTMB and FO4-themed challenges there): Check! It’s not much – just me hashing out what I want do for the two challenges (basically, both light Rags-To-Riches, with Alice focusing on becoming a master vampire and Victor on building a settlement), but it’s something, and at least I’m a little more prepared for my queue this week.
5. OPTIONAL -- start designing Valicetines for this year: Sadly not a check – but I do need to do that sometime soon, as Valentine’s is only two weeks away! At least I should be able to rely on my Sims screenshots for one good pic. . .
So yeah, four out of five, and the fifth was labeled optional anyway. Not too bad for a Sunday. And I just finished my Valice Multiverse queue (at least one ask has already embraced my new "Fallout of Darkness" universe), so it's time to take care of my DW comment and head to bed. Because, as far as I know, work is still on for tomorrow, and I need to wake up at normal time to check. *shrug* If I do get to stay home and it's not work-from-home, I think I'll try the pub section of Untitled Goose Game on top of the Standard Weekday To-Do list and see if I can complete that and thus the game. :) Night all!
Anyway, how'd I do on the old productivity front today?
1. Watch the three OXBox/OXtra videos in my Watch Later, Call Me Kevin, and Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check! Was vaguely hoping I could maybe fit in GrayStillPlays, but no dice. Ah well – still got the list item sorted, yay!
A) Started with the OXBox and OXtra, including –
1. “The Medium: THE NEW SILENT HILL? (The Medium Gameplay)” – basically exactly what it says on the tin, Andy and Jane playing a quick teaser of new horror game The Medium. Starring psychic Marianne, friends to children named Sadness and with the ability to operate in two worlds at once! No, seriously, this is a gameplay mechanic – sometimes the game will go split-screen, with Marianne in both the real world and the rather more fleshy spirit world, and you’ll have to navigate both to get to your goal. And sometimes even do an out-of-body experience to go through the spirit world to get somewhere you can’t get in the real world – just watch the timer and don’t let yourself fade away! Andy and Jane seemed to quite enjoy their trip to not-Silent Hill, with its flesh corridors, one-armed masked children, and killer moths. And extremely haunted shoes. XD But it does genuinely look pretty cool, so I shouldn’t make too much fun. :p
2. “7 Bosses That Were Way Scarier in the Remake: Commenter Edition” – a follow-up to a list about bosses made scarier in the remakes of their respective games. Generally through the medium of “more eyes and mouths and rotting flesh, please!” Or, in the case of one monster that is, in Gabe Newell’s own words on the monsters of the original Half-Life, “giving the giant armored spider with a testicle to the fans to remake please!” Though the creepiest one was definitely the Gravemind from Halo 2: Anniversary – from “Audrey 2” jokes to some horrible flesh flower thing with multiple mouths. Eeeep. O.o T-talk about a glow-up, huh?
3. “7 Annoying Things Games Fixed with Easy Solutions” – Basically, little annoyances in games, and how some games raise the bar in handling them. Like games that have checkpoints in the middle of big multi-part boss fights! Or games that have linked storage chests for all your gear, which may be scattered all over the game world. Or games that TELL YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GO YES THANK YOU PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS SORT OF THINGS ARE JERKS I GET LOST EASILY. ...You can tell which one I’m passionate about. XD (Well, that and inventory management – why do you think I have a number of mods to help with carry capacity in Fallout 4?
B) Then straight on to Call Me Kevin – and yay, more GTA V Chaos Mod, Twitch Chat edition! :D Kevin managed to complete THREE whole missions this time, despite Twitch Chat’s best efforts. AND, more importantly, he managed to punch out Griefer Jesus before he could start griefing. Blessed stream highlights there! :D But yeah, poor Kevin had to deal with people inverting gravity while sticking him in first person, spawning angry clones of his player character to fight him, dropping tugs on top of him in cutscenes, and making him so famous on the hunt for Bigfoot that the combined efforts of all the wildlife mobbing him launched him into the sky on a cushion of boulders. XD Hilarious as always! :)
C) And of course, this evening, we had our usual – Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO episode! Today he did Fort Hagen, which was super tense, given all the synths and turrets and whatnot he had to face. Jon spent most of the video laying mines, creeping about, taking the sneakiest of sneak attacks, and at the first available opportunity, tossing his Turret Total Hack tape into a terminal and making them all his friends. Which he then blew up as Finalley doesn’t really DO friendship. XD The worst part was when he finally made it down to Kellogg himself – you see, the game does something nice here and gives you the opportunity to grab yourself a Fat Man and mini-nuke from the armory if you don’t fancy actually having a conversation with Kellogg. Jon happily took advantage of that, with the plan being he’d nuke Kellogg from the corridor (thus being well out of range), then lay down a bottlecap mine to take out whichever Synth Strider bodyguard survived the blast while he retreated to a better vantage point for a shot.
One of the Striders ended up standing right in front of the doorway, and thus right in front of Kellogg. Blocking Jon’s shot. Cue Jon having to ENTER THE ROOM, loop around all the way to the OTHER side to get far enough away, and throw the mine down between Kellogg and the Strider that wouldn’t move as a failsafe. He did some Psycho-Jet, critted the shot, and – BOOM! One dead Kellogg, two dead Striders, one uninjured and still-just-Lethargic Finalley. Jon was openly relieved and couldn’t believe his luck. He collected what he needed, went out to watch the arrival of the Prydwen, then started back to base –
And ran into the Brotherhood along the way – a small patrol attacking some Gunners near the water plant a bunch of Super Mutants hold. Jon helped them out by killing a Legendary (which had an – okay drop in a Rapid Institute Rifle), then, for some reason, decided to antagonize the Super Mutants under the rationale that he had help from the surviving members of the squad.
Super Mutants had a missile launcher. Cue Jon, through SHEER LUCK, avoiding being exploded by a missile and legging it while swearing (lightly – he only says stuff like “fuck” when he’s startled by radstags XD). And then, just when you thought he was out of the woods –
Raiders attacking Oberland Station. One in power armor. Jon ran for it, but one of them got a shot. So he made it through the super-plot-important Fort Hagen without a scratch, and dodged a Super Mutant’s missile launcher – and a random raider at Oberland takes 16.53 health off his total. The YOLO run in a nutshell, everybody! Poor, stressed-out Jon ended back at base, saying that he needed to have a serious think about the order he wished to do things in going forward! XD Come on, Jon, I believe in you! Make it through the base game campaign, at least!
2. EITHER figure out what I'm doing with Fallout 4 (basically, does the fucked-up modded situation require a reinstall) OR just try to finish Untitled Goose Game (complete the other two "quickly!" lists): Check for the latter in the “just try” sense – I fired up UGG before and after lunch, but due to the final to-do lists kind of depending on the humans doing the exact right thing at the exact right time, I was only able to complete the “Back Gardens, Quickly” achievement and thus that to-do list item. Gave the pub a couple of tries, but no dice – though I did at least discover that stealing the pint glass is going to be much easier! Since the back gate is open now, I can just go through the back and drop it in the water there instead of trying to get out the front without breaking the accursed thing. Right now, trying to get the candle for “set the table” is looking like the hardest bit, since that’s near the front of the pub where I have both the publican AND her husband with potential eyes on me. . .
3.Get in a workout: Check! Did a slightly-more-intense-than-usual round on the bike, and finished episode 47 of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough while I was at it! Caught up with Grills, Nick, and Longfellow as the latter cleared out the last of the ghouls in the National Campground, fulfilling his obligations to the Brotherhood and Callie back at Far Harbor’s main port in one fell swoop. After that the group pushed onward, encountering along the way a pair of Young Gulpers that were pretty damn tough – admittedly, one of them was a Legendary, but Jon was still surprised. Legendary had a Relentless Walking Cane on them, too – poor Jon, he either gets great drops or trash ones. At any rate, they had a brief run-in with the Children of Atom that marked a new location on Grills’s map, then finally reached Acadia, where Longfellow dropped them off and offered up his cabin as a place to relax once they were done. Grills told him he’d be by later, and went in to meet with DiMA, Nick’s “brother” and the atom-punkier of the two Generation 2 prototypes. He’s a pretty interesting character – very soothing voice, very calm and measured way of speaking. . .I already know that he’s something of a hypocrite, but I like him as a character. His and Nick’s first interaction was pretty fascinating too. Totally prepared to believe him when it comes to their history, if only because I know the Institute and leaving one prototype to develop their own personality while constantly rewriting the other sounds like the kind of bullshit they’d do. Nick seemed to need some time with this information, though – Grills was nice and told him they’d talk later, when he was ready.
I also discovered, to my surprise, that the “are you a synth” question comes up literally in the first conversation you have with DiMA. Jon had Grills admit to wondering, though personally – it’s an interesting idea, yeah, but the way it’s structured, it literally only works as a joke on the fact that your character’s first memory would have to be the tutorial, because, well, video game character. The minute you bring in unique Sole Survivors who could have other answers in a fanfic situation (like my own Victor). . . *shrug* But yeah, if you want to play around with the idea (I know the theory is a popular one), it’s a good start, at least! Might work best with a Sole Survivor who’s already wondered about having amnesia. . . Grills also admitted he was with the Brotherhood, but promised to play nice for the moment, if only because Jon really wanted to do the Eddie Winter stuff with Nick.
Speaking of which, guess what came up right after Grills stopped talking with DiMA? :D I really like how this comes about – how Nick admits to feeling like a machine playing at being a man, and how he just wants to put this to rest to clear out some of Original Nick’s old demons. Including the death of Jenny, Original Nick’s fiancee, which he only just remembers. Yeah, I know, Fridging The Love Interest is a badly overused backstory in FO4, but Nick’s voice actor really sells it, so. . . At any rate, Nick told Grills that he knows Eddie got ghoulified early in an attempt to live forever, and that he knows where the guy’s bunker is, but they need to collect all his “Winter’s End” holotapes to get the code to crack it. Grills already has half, so good start! :) And so we ended with Grills refueling and preparing for a sleep, while Jon talked about his Far Harbor plans. Namely, he’s gonna play nice with everyone right now. . .but there’s a good chance he’ll be taking a break midway through to do the Winters quest, then come back to the Island and be a proper Brotherhood soldier. I expect to be appalled and angry with the BOS, as I usually am whenever Jon shows off some of their faction-specific gameplay. Techno-racists.
4. Write something for this week's Wednesday Sims-themed post on Victor Luvs Alice (I'm thinking some ideas for my VTMB and FO4-themed challenges there): Check! It’s not much – just me hashing out what I want do for the two challenges (basically, both light Rags-To-Riches, with Alice focusing on becoming a master vampire and Victor on building a settlement), but it’s something, and at least I’m a little more prepared for my queue this week.
5. OPTIONAL -- start designing Valicetines for this year: Sadly not a check – but I do need to do that sometime soon, as Valentine’s is only two weeks away! At least I should be able to rely on my Sims screenshots for one good pic. . .
So yeah, four out of five, and the fifth was labeled optional anyway. Not too bad for a Sunday. And I just finished my Valice Multiverse queue (at least one ask has already embraced my new "Fallout of Darkness" universe), so it's time to take care of my DW comment and head to bed. Because, as far as I know, work is still on for tomorrow, and I need to wake up at normal time to check. *shrug* If I do get to stay home and it's not work-from-home, I think I'll try the pub section of Untitled Goose Game on top of the Standard Weekday To-Do list and see if I can complete that and thus the game. :) Night all!
