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More Damn Stress Thursday
May. 6th, 2021 11:10 pmOn the plus side, for the most part, Talky Coworker was quiet doing her own thing. On the minus side, I had a shitty ride in (think there was an accident somewhere, judging by the fact we had to get out of the way of an ambulance), and a number of things that kind of piled up throughout the day, leading to me feeling fairly stressed by the time I left. Just -- a lot of credit card stuff, a lot of exceptions stuff, some batches that I tried to get to except I ended up on the phone. . .it was annoying, and I didn't like it.
At least the weather was a LOT better today -- better than they said it was gonna be, in fact! Sunny skies and up near 70. Definitely a "beanbag game" day -- and while Dad won the first game, I won the second two! :) So that was satisfying. It's the little things, you know?
And after that, we have the ever-present to-do list:
1. Get in a workout: Check! Another round on the bike finished off Episode 9 of “Nuka-World Level One Survival!” I caught up with Minnie right outside one of the tunnels with the out-of-control racing-track cars, showing off how deadly they are as they mowed down a few ghouls wandering nearby. Despite this deadliness, though, running down their track is an easy way into the maintenance tunnels, and that’s where Jon wanted to go, so – into the tunnel Minnie went! Fortunately Jon knows how to dodge the cars (it all depends on knowing when to run), and she managed to get through without injury, nice.
The tunnels themselves were mainly notable for an Oswald cutscene of him talking to one of his “Painted Ghouls” – going on about the reason for the paint being to scare off the raiders, and giving a quick glimpse into why he’s even holed up in Kiddie Kingdom – namely, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, Rachel, to come back with a cure for the ferals so they can drive out the raiders together and then set up a nice farming life. Awww. . .which turns into a sad “awww” when you remember I’ve already seen what happened to Rachel. :( Rather sucks, that. . .
With that sorted (and Oswald’s magical teleportation abilities shown off), Minnie explored the tunnels a bit, finding some convenient mattresses and sleeping bags to slap a save down, then wading through some very toxic water to go kill Oswald’s feral friend. She also attempted to turn off the rad sprayers, but Jon already knew this was a fool’s errand – indeed, when she returned up top, Oswald basically mocked her by pretending to be upset, then just putting them back on again. Ha. :p The trip DID net Minnie a key to the various doors leading in and out, however – Jon took a moment to explore various entrances and exits. Minnie eventually came out near the theater castle – and immediately had her arm broken by a ghoul she hadn’t seen. Fortunately her knife continued to do an amazing job, and she was able to kill it before it killed her. Stimpacks took care of the broken bone, and she was able to either sneak up on or just slash apart all the other ghouls in her path as she climbed back up to the bridge chokepoint and made her way back around to the Fun House. There was one determined bugger that kept avoiding being hit by the racing cars in favor of chasing her, but even he didn’t last long. :p
Once within the Fun House, Minnie changed back into her regular strength-improving gear, and Jon started biting his nails, because right at the start was a mirror maze. Full of mines. And Minnie very much does NOT have “Sneak” level three, where she stops setting off enemy mines. What followed was a nailbiter trip through the mirrors as Jon – well, set off one mine right away and somehow didn’t die. XD Some Nuka-Cola helped heal her up enough to get through the others, fortunately – Jon even discovered he didn’t need to approach one mine at all, which he liked. After that, the “hypno-halls” (a tunnel of spinning green swirls, with various fake exits concealing the real one) were barely anything at all, especially given Minnie hacked the terminal to reduce the nausea spin. She made it through there (narrowly missing the hole in one tunnel) and proceeded to the spinning room of spinning, where some molotovs and quick use of Blitz downed the ghouls inside and got her a Freezing Sledgehammer off a Legendary. She also found the hidden Cappy there, but I don’t think Jon actually RECORDED the clue – he was too concerned about the massive amount of rads in the room. She eventually found the exit and proceeded to where Oswald had been holed up, only to get a message that he was waiting for her in the theater. Jon decided to save that for next time and instead ended on Minnie killing a Legendary in a flooded section with spinning bottles you had to jump between – and promptly losing it under the water, gaining only a fuckton of rads for her trouble. Ah well – hopefully by the beginning of Episode 10, she’ll be in a better place!
2. Edit some more on “In A World Of His Own” Chapter 4: Check – Victor and Alice have officially met The Conductor (mostly via Alice accidentally scaring him off his stage), and they’ve talked a bit about why he performs to an empty theater (mainly, great acoustics without being judged). And this has led to Victor ranting a bit about the Everglots having a beautiful piano that they don’t play, ending with him declaring it’s probably “all warped inside by this point. . . .” Yeah, I think I’ve set up the Paino fight a lot better this time around. :)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: This is technically N/A, as – well, Kevin said yesterday in the description of his “Drunk Goggles” video that he was taking Thursday off uploading for resting purposes. And with today being Gray’s usual “day off,” plus James having a rather erratic upload schedule. . .well, there weren’t any Subs videos for me to watch! So instead I knocked a couple of videos out of the Watch Later:
A) OXtra, “7 Genius Tricks Games Use to Show You Where to Go” – from using light sources to illuminate objects and paths of interest, to making the objects you can interact with stand out with a splash of color, to putting big obvious landmarks on the map, to just blocking off the “too soon for you” ways with hordes of terrible enemies, games have a plethora of ways to show you where to go beyond the checkpoint waymarker and helpful directional arrow! I mean, they still use the markers and arrows, and my “gets lost easily in any game that isn’t aggressively linear” ass thanks them for it, but still. They try to be more subtle sometimes! :p
B) OXBox, “7 Most Outrageous DLCs We Can't Believe They Charged Real Money For” – from charging for the series' old karaoke songs in Yakuza Like A Dragon and then only letting you listen to them on a cruddy jukebox in a single location (you can’t even play them as a minigame!), to giving you a pack of new paint colors for your cars in exchange for a few bucks in Gran Turismo 5 – but you can only use any one color ONCE (as in, you paint a car that color, that’s that color used up forever), to The Saboteur straight up having you pay to see the dancers in the games’ cabaret clubs with their tits out (and adding in a small contest where your in-game character can win a car), there have been some scummy DLC deals out there. You’d better believe I name-dropped My First Pet Stuff in the comments!
C) OXBox, “Resident Evil Village Review: 7 Reasons You Need to Play It (Resident Evil Village Gameplay)” – Andy basically gushes about the eighth RE game because he’s really enjoying playing it and thinks it’s beautiful, scary, fun, and an excellent spiritual sequel to RE4 (maybe it’s multiples of four that get blessed with being “the best” in this franchise?). I know of worse ways to spend nine minutes than watching clips of giant vampire ladies while Andy chats about how much he loves something (so far, anyway). (Also technically not in my Watch Later, but now it doesn’t have to GO in my Watch Later, sooo. . .)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – made my own post for the Thief of Time episode of the Wyrd Sisters Podcast, as they STILL don’t have it up on their own tumblr. O.o But it’s in the queue for Saturday now, which is the important thing. And one thread in the queue for Valice Multiverse – nothing else in my tags caught my eye to reblog, but eh. Another day!
So that was all good. Now I just have to finish up with my DW comment of the night, then hit the sheets. Just one more day to go! And then a weekend, yay. . . Have to remember to find Mom a good Mother's Day e-card, though. *nods* Night all!
At least the weather was a LOT better today -- better than they said it was gonna be, in fact! Sunny skies and up near 70. Definitely a "beanbag game" day -- and while Dad won the first game, I won the second two! :) So that was satisfying. It's the little things, you know?
And after that, we have the ever-present to-do list:
1. Get in a workout: Check! Another round on the bike finished off Episode 9 of “Nuka-World Level One Survival!” I caught up with Minnie right outside one of the tunnels with the out-of-control racing-track cars, showing off how deadly they are as they mowed down a few ghouls wandering nearby. Despite this deadliness, though, running down their track is an easy way into the maintenance tunnels, and that’s where Jon wanted to go, so – into the tunnel Minnie went! Fortunately Jon knows how to dodge the cars (it all depends on knowing when to run), and she managed to get through without injury, nice.
The tunnels themselves were mainly notable for an Oswald cutscene of him talking to one of his “Painted Ghouls” – going on about the reason for the paint being to scare off the raiders, and giving a quick glimpse into why he’s even holed up in Kiddie Kingdom – namely, he’s waiting for his girlfriend, Rachel, to come back with a cure for the ferals so they can drive out the raiders together and then set up a nice farming life. Awww. . .which turns into a sad “awww” when you remember I’ve already seen what happened to Rachel. :( Rather sucks, that. . .
With that sorted (and Oswald’s magical teleportation abilities shown off), Minnie explored the tunnels a bit, finding some convenient mattresses and sleeping bags to slap a save down, then wading through some very toxic water to go kill Oswald’s feral friend. She also attempted to turn off the rad sprayers, but Jon already knew this was a fool’s errand – indeed, when she returned up top, Oswald basically mocked her by pretending to be upset, then just putting them back on again. Ha. :p The trip DID net Minnie a key to the various doors leading in and out, however – Jon took a moment to explore various entrances and exits. Minnie eventually came out near the theater castle – and immediately had her arm broken by a ghoul she hadn’t seen. Fortunately her knife continued to do an amazing job, and she was able to kill it before it killed her. Stimpacks took care of the broken bone, and she was able to either sneak up on or just slash apart all the other ghouls in her path as she climbed back up to the bridge chokepoint and made her way back around to the Fun House. There was one determined bugger that kept avoiding being hit by the racing cars in favor of chasing her, but even he didn’t last long. :p
Once within the Fun House, Minnie changed back into her regular strength-improving gear, and Jon started biting his nails, because right at the start was a mirror maze. Full of mines. And Minnie very much does NOT have “Sneak” level three, where she stops setting off enemy mines. What followed was a nailbiter trip through the mirrors as Jon – well, set off one mine right away and somehow didn’t die. XD Some Nuka-Cola helped heal her up enough to get through the others, fortunately – Jon even discovered he didn’t need to approach one mine at all, which he liked. After that, the “hypno-halls” (a tunnel of spinning green swirls, with various fake exits concealing the real one) were barely anything at all, especially given Minnie hacked the terminal to reduce the nausea spin. She made it through there (narrowly missing the hole in one tunnel) and proceeded to the spinning room of spinning, where some molotovs and quick use of Blitz downed the ghouls inside and got her a Freezing Sledgehammer off a Legendary. She also found the hidden Cappy there, but I don’t think Jon actually RECORDED the clue – he was too concerned about the massive amount of rads in the room. She eventually found the exit and proceeded to where Oswald had been holed up, only to get a message that he was waiting for her in the theater. Jon decided to save that for next time and instead ended on Minnie killing a Legendary in a flooded section with spinning bottles you had to jump between – and promptly losing it under the water, gaining only a fuckton of rads for her trouble. Ah well – hopefully by the beginning of Episode 10, she’ll be in a better place!
2. Edit some more on “In A World Of His Own” Chapter 4: Check – Victor and Alice have officially met The Conductor (mostly via Alice accidentally scaring him off his stage), and they’ve talked a bit about why he performs to an empty theater (mainly, great acoustics without being judged). And this has led to Victor ranting a bit about the Everglots having a beautiful piano that they don’t play, ending with him declaring it’s probably “all warped inside by this point. . . .” Yeah, I think I’ve set up the Paino fight a lot better this time around. :)
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: This is technically N/A, as – well, Kevin said yesterday in the description of his “Drunk Goggles” video that he was taking Thursday off uploading for resting purposes. And with today being Gray’s usual “day off,” plus James having a rather erratic upload schedule. . .well, there weren’t any Subs videos for me to watch! So instead I knocked a couple of videos out of the Watch Later:
A) OXtra, “7 Genius Tricks Games Use to Show You Where to Go” – from using light sources to illuminate objects and paths of interest, to making the objects you can interact with stand out with a splash of color, to putting big obvious landmarks on the map, to just blocking off the “too soon for you” ways with hordes of terrible enemies, games have a plethora of ways to show you where to go beyond the checkpoint waymarker and helpful directional arrow! I mean, they still use the markers and arrows, and my “gets lost easily in any game that isn’t aggressively linear” ass thanks them for it, but still. They try to be more subtle sometimes! :p
B) OXBox, “7 Most Outrageous DLCs We Can't Believe They Charged Real Money For” – from charging for the series' old karaoke songs in Yakuza Like A Dragon and then only letting you listen to them on a cruddy jukebox in a single location (you can’t even play them as a minigame!), to giving you a pack of new paint colors for your cars in exchange for a few bucks in Gran Turismo 5 – but you can only use any one color ONCE (as in, you paint a car that color, that’s that color used up forever), to The Saboteur straight up having you pay to see the dancers in the games’ cabaret clubs with their tits out (and adding in a small contest where your in-game character can win a car), there have been some scummy DLC deals out there. You’d better believe I name-dropped My First Pet Stuff in the comments!
C) OXBox, “Resident Evil Village Review: 7 Reasons You Need to Play It (Resident Evil Village Gameplay)” – Andy basically gushes about the eighth RE game because he’s really enjoying playing it and thinks it’s beautiful, scary, fun, and an excellent spiritual sequel to RE4 (maybe it’s multiples of four that get blessed with being “the best” in this franchise?). I know of worse ways to spend nine minutes than watching clips of giant vampire ladies while Andy chats about how much he loves something (so far, anyway). (Also technically not in my Watch Later, but now it doesn’t have to GO in my Watch Later, sooo. . .)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – made my own post for the Thief of Time episode of the Wyrd Sisters Podcast, as they STILL don’t have it up on their own tumblr. O.o But it’s in the queue for Saturday now, which is the important thing. And one thread in the queue for Valice Multiverse – nothing else in my tags caught my eye to reblog, but eh. Another day!
So that was all good. Now I just have to finish up with my DW comment of the night, then hit the sheets. Just one more day to go! And then a weekend, yay. . . Have to remember to find Mom a good Mother's Day e-card, though. *nods* Night all!
