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Bad Morning Thursday
Mar. 25th, 2021 11:09 pmFirst one into the office, immediately followed by talky coworker, then I put some checks into the wrong account by accident, then I was plunged back into trying to figure out credit card things. . .it got a little better after lunch, when I had more of a game plan and wasn't feeling quite so angry at the world, but yeah, hardly my best day at work. Guh. . . And the weather wasn't nearly as nice as they said it was going to be for most of the day. We had like two and a half hours of the sunny, warm weather they promised. Fortunately those two and a half hours were in the afternoon and included when I got home, so my family and I got to get out and play the beanbag game. Dad won the first two games, and I won the third, yay. :D So that was nice at least.
Also nice is getting things done on the to-do list:
1. Get in a workout: Check – another bike ride, another episode of of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Started episode 69 today, with Grills taking a moment to repair his power armor (which took fewer resources than Jon was expecting – turns out this set doesn’t require much aluminum at all!) before killing some Rust Devils lurking at Chaos Junction and summoning a vertibird to take him on down south! Specifically, to the general area of Vault 88! Jon, you see, wanted to do two things:
1. Complete all of the story-based DLC – and Vault-Tec Workshop does have at least a new location, a few quests, and a few interesting characters
2. See how quickly he can complete this DLC – it seems he went all-out making a nice Vault 88 in a previous playthrough (I REALLY gotta watch Bacon after I finish with Grills), and now he wants to see what the bare minimum he can get away with is.
So yeah, Grills took a vertibird flight over to – well, he was going to land at the Atomatoys Factory, but then he realized that, hey, there’s a nice little prompt to “land” whenever he wants while he’s flying in a vertibird, and he’s never actually tried it out! So he let the vertibird get decently close to the quarry, then had it land so he could hop out! Not only was he NOT immediately waylaid by enemies, turns out there was another vertibird in the area, and that one dropped off some Brotherhood Knights, so he had some help clearing out the quarry! Lucky Grills.
After killing the raiders and breaching the entrance, it was time to get down to business. Grills ended the security lockdown, found the control board for the Vault-Tec workshop, cleared the rubble out of the main entrance, met with Overseer Barstow (the ghoulified potential head of the Vault who was touring the place when the bombs fell), then killed the rest of her ghoulified companions (with her blessing; they were ferals, unlike her) before building her a desk in the middle of the half-completed vault. She didn’t seem to mind that it was sitting in the dirt one bit and sent him to turn on the radio and explore a bit before helping her vet new vault dwellers. Grills elected to go east, as he thought that was easy ghoul territory – it actually turned out to be easy Mirelurk territory. Though he did get surprised by a Hunter – enemies managing to sneak up Grills has been a thing throughout this whole series. I haven’t forgotten the Radstag from the very beginning that actually got Jon to curse, and Jon hasn’t either. XD
Anyway, he killed the Mirelurks – including their Queen – gathered up their meat, went and found the control board for the Workshop down there (in a room with a couple of ghouls, no big), then returned to the main room to build a cooking station and make some fresh food before going to meet the candidates. Dear old Clem was chosen, and Grills dove right into experiment number one – the Powercycle! This is a bicycle that produces power for the vault, with three potential ways to increase power output – give the person riding electric shocks to make them cycle faster; inject the person full of drugs (Buffout, I believe) so they’ll stay on longer; or just give them some nice environmental enhancements, like nice scents and sounds, to encourage them to continue pedaling. Grills went with the third, mostly because Jon apparently hasn’t tried Ted The Sole Good Vault-Tec Employee’s nice experiments and wanted to see how Barstow would react. She was not impressed, telling Grills they weren’t running a day spa. Jon was mostly confused as to how Clem managed to short out the bike after an hour’s ride with just the nice smell of mutfruit. XD I left it with Barstow telling Grills he needed to head to Hallucingen, Inc. to pick up some materials for the next experiment, and Jon musing that Vault 88 is supposed to have shortcuts in it to other places, which would be very useful for early-game survival mode. . . I hope he shows one off before the episode’s done!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Having gotten past rats, Alice just completed the “stealth” section of the tutorial (sneak around this one Sabbat vampire patrolling a certain area) and is now coming up on the “basic combat” section (now go and kill him because reasons). Alice is not particularly happy about getting into a fistfight with a Sabbat Gangrel – good thing the upcoming section will prove she’s decent at improvisation!
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: Check, though, again, easy on a Thursday. :p Cleared out some other videos too –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and some lovely Vacation Simulator! It’s that VR game where you’re an android simulating human life with TV screen robots, and the portion of life you’re simulating is vacationing! Kevin played this before, going to the beach – this time, he hit up the forest to try out its activities! Catching dragonflies, painting pictures of flowers getting shot with BotMoss, catching toy fish for a fisherman bot (and accidentally smacking himself in the face while doing it), making waffles out of books for a camping family to chow down on while he eats all their marshmallows and listens to the Dadbot tell a scary story. . .I gotta say, it looked like a lot of fun. And really made me miss s’mores. Darn you Kevin! *shakes fist*
B) Then it was time for a trip into the Watch Later to clear out a couple of videos – some OXBox and OXtra lists, in fact! We had:
I. “7 Weirdest Things Games Made You Do While High” – drug trips in video games that involved rather more than just huffing a joint. We had Spidey swinging around a poison-filled NYC while being tormented by his guilt over Doc Ock’s origin in PS4 Spider-Man; Michael, Trevor, and Franklin becoming animals under the influence of peyote – including the world’s deadliest pug – in Grand Theft Auto V; Ajay making friends with a tiger and fighting shadow demons in Shangri-La at the behest of two drug dealers in Far Cry 4; and Arthur beating a rat to death while seeing it as a pinata in We Happy Few (which is, admittedly, while he’s coming off the high of Joy). Weird shit – I’d put in following the Fog Mother in Fallout 4 for the Inevitable Commenter’s Edition, but seeing that in Jon’s Survival Playthrough was actually kinda disappointing. If I do a fanfic version, I’m dialing up the weird.
II. “7 Ways Loading Screens Were Good, Actually” – Yes, in a “slow news day” for OXBox, they decided to make the case for loading screens. XD To be fair, their arguments were stuff like “you can take a moment to just enjoy the soundtrack instead being distracted by game,” “you can get caught up with quick tips and story beats contained on the loading screen,” and “you can take a moment to mentally prep yourself for the next bit of the game – or send a quick text message to your concerned parents.” XD And indeed, while I mostly appreciate Alice: Madness Returns loading super-fast on my Alienware machine, I do occasionally miss reading the game hints and Alice’s snarky comments on them. Happily Alice’s snarky commentary bestiary exists in the extra content in the game, and the wiki exists out of it if I really want to get caught up on the loading screen text. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – one thread over on Valice Multiverse, bolstered by some A:MR fanart and an animatic someone’s doing for Victor’s cut song “Erased.” Would have taken me less time if I hadn’t spent so much time looking at a mod on Nexus Mods for custom FO4 signs with references galore, but. . .
Also worth noting I added a couple more songs to my "Fallout of Darkness" playlist on Spotify -- one from my friend Newt's "Valice" playlist that for some reason makes me think of the companions ("A Place For Us," Fitz And The Tantrums), and one I heard on my Mom's MP3 player in the car and, after finding the lyrics, REALLY gave me "Sole Survivor Victor" vibes ("I Still Believe," The Call). So that's nice, good for future Song Saturdays.
And now I have to wrap up with answering a comment and heading to bed. At least tomorrow's Friday. . .followed by a cleaning Saturday, but that'll be worth it to a) have a clean room and b) not have to do it over the long Easter weekend. *nods* Night all!
Also nice is getting things done on the to-do list:
1. Get in a workout: Check – another bike ride, another episode of of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Started episode 69 today, with Grills taking a moment to repair his power armor (which took fewer resources than Jon was expecting – turns out this set doesn’t require much aluminum at all!) before killing some Rust Devils lurking at Chaos Junction and summoning a vertibird to take him on down south! Specifically, to the general area of Vault 88! Jon, you see, wanted to do two things:
1. Complete all of the story-based DLC – and Vault-Tec Workshop does have at least a new location, a few quests, and a few interesting characters
2. See how quickly he can complete this DLC – it seems he went all-out making a nice Vault 88 in a previous playthrough (I REALLY gotta watch Bacon after I finish with Grills), and now he wants to see what the bare minimum he can get away with is.
So yeah, Grills took a vertibird flight over to – well, he was going to land at the Atomatoys Factory, but then he realized that, hey, there’s a nice little prompt to “land” whenever he wants while he’s flying in a vertibird, and he’s never actually tried it out! So he let the vertibird get decently close to the quarry, then had it land so he could hop out! Not only was he NOT immediately waylaid by enemies, turns out there was another vertibird in the area, and that one dropped off some Brotherhood Knights, so he had some help clearing out the quarry! Lucky Grills.
After killing the raiders and breaching the entrance, it was time to get down to business. Grills ended the security lockdown, found the control board for the Vault-Tec workshop, cleared the rubble out of the main entrance, met with Overseer Barstow (the ghoulified potential head of the Vault who was touring the place when the bombs fell), then killed the rest of her ghoulified companions (with her blessing; they were ferals, unlike her) before building her a desk in the middle of the half-completed vault. She didn’t seem to mind that it was sitting in the dirt one bit and sent him to turn on the radio and explore a bit before helping her vet new vault dwellers. Grills elected to go east, as he thought that was easy ghoul territory – it actually turned out to be easy Mirelurk territory. Though he did get surprised by a Hunter – enemies managing to sneak up Grills has been a thing throughout this whole series. I haven’t forgotten the Radstag from the very beginning that actually got Jon to curse, and Jon hasn’t either. XD
Anyway, he killed the Mirelurks – including their Queen – gathered up their meat, went and found the control board for the Workshop down there (in a room with a couple of ghouls, no big), then returned to the main room to build a cooking station and make some fresh food before going to meet the candidates. Dear old Clem was chosen, and Grills dove right into experiment number one – the Powercycle! This is a bicycle that produces power for the vault, with three potential ways to increase power output – give the person riding electric shocks to make them cycle faster; inject the person full of drugs (Buffout, I believe) so they’ll stay on longer; or just give them some nice environmental enhancements, like nice scents and sounds, to encourage them to continue pedaling. Grills went with the third, mostly because Jon apparently hasn’t tried Ted The Sole Good Vault-Tec Employee’s nice experiments and wanted to see how Barstow would react. She was not impressed, telling Grills they weren’t running a day spa. Jon was mostly confused as to how Clem managed to short out the bike after an hour’s ride with just the nice smell of mutfruit. XD I left it with Barstow telling Grills he needed to head to Hallucingen, Inc. to pick up some materials for the next experiment, and Jon musing that Vault 88 is supposed to have shortcuts in it to other places, which would be very useful for early-game survival mode. . . I hope he shows one off before the episode’s done!
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Having gotten past rats, Alice just completed the “stealth” section of the tutorial (sneak around this one Sabbat vampire patrolling a certain area) and is now coming up on the “basic combat” section (now go and kill him because reasons). Alice is not particularly happy about getting into a fistfight with a Sabbat Gangrel – good thing the upcoming section will prove she’s decent at improvisation!
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: Check, though, again, easy on a Thursday. :p Cleared out some other videos too –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and some lovely Vacation Simulator! It’s that VR game where you’re an android simulating human life with TV screen robots, and the portion of life you’re simulating is vacationing! Kevin played this before, going to the beach – this time, he hit up the forest to try out its activities! Catching dragonflies, painting pictures of flowers getting shot with BotMoss, catching toy fish for a fisherman bot (and accidentally smacking himself in the face while doing it), making waffles out of books for a camping family to chow down on while he eats all their marshmallows and listens to the Dadbot tell a scary story. . .I gotta say, it looked like a lot of fun. And really made me miss s’mores. Darn you Kevin! *shakes fist*
B) Then it was time for a trip into the Watch Later to clear out a couple of videos – some OXBox and OXtra lists, in fact! We had:
I. “7 Weirdest Things Games Made You Do While High” – drug trips in video games that involved rather more than just huffing a joint. We had Spidey swinging around a poison-filled NYC while being tormented by his guilt over Doc Ock’s origin in PS4 Spider-Man; Michael, Trevor, and Franklin becoming animals under the influence of peyote – including the world’s deadliest pug – in Grand Theft Auto V; Ajay making friends with a tiger and fighting shadow demons in Shangri-La at the behest of two drug dealers in Far Cry 4; and Arthur beating a rat to death while seeing it as a pinata in We Happy Few (which is, admittedly, while he’s coming off the high of Joy). Weird shit – I’d put in following the Fog Mother in Fallout 4 for the Inevitable Commenter’s Edition, but seeing that in Jon’s Survival Playthrough was actually kinda disappointing. If I do a fanfic version, I’m dialing up the weird.
II. “7 Ways Loading Screens Were Good, Actually” – Yes, in a “slow news day” for OXBox, they decided to make the case for loading screens. XD To be fair, their arguments were stuff like “you can take a moment to just enjoy the soundtrack instead being distracted by game,” “you can get caught up with quick tips and story beats contained on the loading screen,” and “you can take a moment to mentally prep yourself for the next bit of the game – or send a quick text message to your concerned parents.” XD And indeed, while I mostly appreciate Alice: Madness Returns loading super-fast on my Alienware machine, I do occasionally miss reading the game hints and Alice’s snarky comments on them. Happily Alice’s snarky commentary bestiary exists in the extra content in the game, and the wiki exists out of it if I really want to get caught up on the loading screen text. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – one thread over on Valice Multiverse, bolstered by some A:MR fanart and an animatic someone’s doing for Victor’s cut song “Erased.” Would have taken me less time if I hadn’t spent so much time looking at a mod on Nexus Mods for custom FO4 signs with references galore, but. . .
Also worth noting I added a couple more songs to my "Fallout of Darkness" playlist on Spotify -- one from my friend Newt's "Valice" playlist that for some reason makes me think of the companions ("A Place For Us," Fitz And The Tantrums), and one I heard on my Mom's MP3 player in the car and, after finding the lyrics, REALLY gave me "Sole Survivor Victor" vibes ("I Still Believe," The Call). So that's nice, good for future Song Saturdays.
And now I have to wrap up with answering a comment and heading to bed. At least tomorrow's Friday. . .followed by a cleaning Saturday, but that'll be worth it to a) have a clean room and b) not have to do it over the long Easter weekend. *nods* Night all!
