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Elsa's Half Friday
Jul. 9th, 2021 11:44 pmAnd, fortunately, what hit us up here actually WASN'T too bad -- it poured for a good portion of the day, sure (and I had to deal with a leaky window at work, which was -- fun), but it was clearing up by the time we left, and we didn't get too much in the way of wind or anything like that. Hell, sun was out by the end of the day -- and temperature UP. Had to turn on the AC for the night because it was getting hot and muggy! I guess we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow's like -- I think there's another chance of rain, but I'm not positive. Would be nice to get some more sunshine!
As for my day overall:
Work – A fairly quiet half-day, with me doing obits and a quality control file for billings – nothing particularly exciting! The pause is over on Monday, though, as then we’ll be allowed to start putting things on again with all the auditor reports run. For the best – can’t have stuff piling up!
Beanbags – Well, the worst of Elsa was over by the time I got home around 1:45 PM, but the weather certainly remained pretty icky and wet, soooo – no. I’m not sure WHEN the next time we’ll get to them is, as I think there’s a chance of rain straight through Tuesday. . .we’ll see!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check! Got another thirty in on the bike while watching –
A) A SimsCommunity.info video on some of the features coming to the base game with the pre-Cottage Living patch, including an upgraded version of the Calendar from Seasons (now with the ability to track all different festivals that might pop up!); the notepad under its own section instead of being part of the phone; the water tool and various decorations and effects to create ponds (including signs that allow you to prestock your ponds with fish, or stock them yourselves with fish from your inventory!); and the creation of “Lot Challenges” to move some of the more negative Lot Traits out of – well, Lot Traits (“Off The Grid” is now a Lot Challenge, for example). It’s interesting stuff, and includes some small fixes like being able to find Sims via a new menu option on their portraits in your Sim’s relationships panel. I hope this all works out!
B) Two Carl’s Sims Guides videos, both about Kits! One was a minute-long sarcastic claim that “Kits are a hit!” (with about 40% of players), the other a slightly-deeper look at the first three Kits (with an emphasis on Bust The Dust as the only kit with gameplay – the other, as Carl put it, are basically the elements of a Styled Room for kitchens and a bunch of clothes). He was not impressed, and I don’t blame him – I really don’t like this new practice of putting out micro-kits like this. At least the latest expansion is looking good so far?
2. Work some more on the HypnoKink Verse: Check, but I feel it was a bit more in the technical sense – though I did split up the “catch-all” story collection into a bunch of separate stories arranged where they would fall in the timeline. And I have officially decided to call the verse the You Belong To Me Verse – and use that as the title for the last story in the series. Because hell, if “Secundus” can name the Secundus Verse. . . I also finally have a title for the FIRST story in the series, “Learn to Love Again.” I still need titles for a bunch of the other stories, but with that, I think I can finally get writing the opener! About freaking time, huh?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and clear some more stuff out of the Watch Later: Five-sixths check – I did indeed get some stuff out of the Watch Later, but I was only able to get to four out of the five videos that were waiting for me in the Subs. Look, James Turner has been uploading a LOT lately, and some pretty long videos to boot, sooo. . .
A) Started off in the Watch Later with an Atop The Fourth Wall Marathon, because that was another thing I was behind on! We had, in order:
I. “Transformers/Ghostbusters: Ghosts of Cybertron” – Yes, that’s right, a Transformers and Ghostbusters crossover. I believe this is marginally more weird than Transformers and Back To The Future (which was also a thing – unsure if it’s in the same timeline as this story, though!) simply because of the added supernatural element, but given some of the stuff we saw in the retrospective. . . Anyway, this is an alternate Transformers timeline where the Autobots fleeing Cybertron was immediately followed by the planet getting wrecked by a mecha-version of Gozer, meaning the Autobots don’t encounter Earth until one of them picks up a signal, goes down, and encounters the Ghostbusters and Starscream’s ghost, scouting out the place for the Allspark for his true big bad master, Kreemzeek, an electrical creature that turned him and a few key Decepticons into ghosts to absorb them and gain more power. Crossover features, of course, a ECTO-1 themed Transformer (Ectotron – he scanned the original car, which got caught in a sinkhole), Starscream being frightened of Peter Venkman, and Optimus fighting Ghost!Megatron. It’s silly fun and really makes you smile. :D Yay for the good stuff that shows up on this show!
II. “The New Guardians #4” – the fourth issue of a superhero series Linkara occasionally talks about, notable mainly for the fact that it introduced us all to Snowflame, the supervillain who is explicitly superpowered by cocaine. Because reasons. This issue is a little more low-key – by which I mean it features the New Guardians (who lost their home in the last issue thanks to a child gang blowing it up) going to stay with a Green Lantern supporting character, Kilowog and see if he can help the three members who are HIV + or have AIDS, while he checks out how their powers work. Also three Japanese businessmen, having been thrown out of the house earlier by Kilowog who doesn’t want to sell his tech to them, send a polite super-robot with knee lasers to try and steal it. Also The Floronic Man, the plant-person of the group, is apparently intersex. Not nearly as fun as the last episode, but it’s not horrible. As Linkara said, the book got a new writer at this point, so this felt like a bit of a “soft reboot” for the characters. We’ll see where it goes later!
III. “Codename: Ninja #1” – a comic from Solson, who previously printed guide comics to becoming a ninja! Linkara covered those last year, so this year, he’s taking on an actual story of a hero picking up the ways of the ninja! Or, rather, a hero who picked them up some years before that we see in a mediation flashback after he’s tapped by his friend “Iron John,” Director of the CIA, to help save him from assassination attempts. It’s basically 80s schlock about the son of an American couple living in Japan who became an awesome ninja fighting to save his friend (who was already doing a pretty good job of fending off assassins), including a ninja-fight on a rooftop that ends with the opponent doing the smart thing and pulling a gun. Featured both the Ninja-Style Dancer and “Gaijin Goombah,” another YouTuber who specializes in Japanese media, including ninjas, talking about historical and cultural inaccuracies and whatnot. Interesting stuff – probably more interesting than the comic itself. XD
B) Then, this evening, we started with Fun With Shorts and “Fun With Shorts: Life in a Medieval Town Part 1!” A simple short with a simple budget detailing life in medieval times, as seen by Otto – a serf for a nobleman in a castle, sent to town to sell a cow and then buy some shoes. Yes, the appropriate jokes were made. XD It’s your typical cheap “educational” Coronet fare – silly, but filling. :p
C) After that was James Turner and Part II of “Chaz Ricks in Cottage Living Early Access!” Chaz is – not doing great. He’s wet himself in public, he’s passed out in public multiple times, and he had some distinct digestive issues from living off nothing but harvested fruit. Also he’s Sad from being lonely all the time because James doesn’t believe in letting Sims socialize. XD On the plus side, he’s FINALLY turned in a few of his village errands – he successfully watched two foxes and gave the Creature Keeper some food from the pub (which – Michael himself was visiting at the time, sooo. . .); delivered a package to the publican, Sara Scott; and delivered some food to the grocery stall owner, Kim! Everyone’s been paying him with both money and sundries – some free food, some free ingredients, it’s all good. He’s earned enough to buy some proper garden plots for his alley and is making a go at growing pumpkins and aubergines (aka eggplants). And by the end of the episode, he finally had enough for a chicken coop and a single chicken – Henther! So that’s nice. :) Maybe with a chicken to talk to he’ll feel more social. XD
D) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin for another round of Bitlife! This time with Goodat Politics, an American boy with a dream – become President! And – weirdly enough, for a Kevin video – he ACHIEVED that dream! I mean, it took a while, and involved him working up to it by becoming School Board Director, Mayor, and Governor, with stints as a junior lawyer in between. . .and marrying many old women in the hopes they would die and he’d get their money. Worked for the first two, but the third held on through the presidency apparently out of spite. XD But Goodat won in a narrow victory and – promptly got himself impeached via book writing, forcing Kevin to pay real money to redo the election and actually serve out a full term. XD He lost the reelection (to a fascist, oh boy), then tried to kill his next wife for more money, managed to get a good lawyer to get himself off once bribing the police didn’t work, then ran for reelection again and lost again. He then tried to kill another wife, got caught and convicted, escaped jail, and fled to Estonia, where he got a job as a judge before dying at the age of 90. Honestly, one of Kevin’s more successful lives, really! XD
E) Then we ended with GrayStillPlays and more GTA V stunt boards! Today’s offering was a series of extremely hard parkour jumps, starting with a super-steep ramp and proceeding through various tightropes, navigation of various obstacles (including Gray’s beloved wind turbines, and a trip through a perpetual explosion that just MURDERED his FPS), and trips through a series of tubes. And to add to the weirdness, Gray’s VEHICLES? Well, they started out as your average rowboat and went through beached humpback, sailboat, giant party yacht, and then back to the average rowboat only with fishing rods attached. None of them drove particularly well, so it took Gray quite a while just to get past jump #1. But he persevered and flew his fleet of ridiculous sea vehicles to the finish line! Every time I think he can’t find a weirder board. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – again, Victor Luvs Alice was fine, so I just had to plop some reblogs into Valice Multiverse (no asks or threads going on today!). Took a while to find some good Corpse Bride stuff, but I just got that completed, so yay.
5. Play Portal Reloaded: Check! Did this after I got home and got situated – played through Chambers 22 through 24! And yes, again, had to use walkthroughs, though I always gave it the good college try before I looked, and I came pretty close to just getting the solution on Chamber 24! But we’re almost at the grand finale, it looks like, and – well. Basically, the plot of this game is that you’re a nameless test subject running this time travel course in the period just before and what I assume to be just after the original Portal (there’s a twenty-year difference between past and future, according to the announcer). And the announcer just told me that my purpose as the test subject on this course?
Go after the rogue test subject that caused the facility to break down and stop them.
Guys, I don’t wanna fistfight Chell, I don’t think that’s gonna work out for me. XD Well, I guess we’ll see what actually happens sometime this weekend. . .
So I managed to hit everything, though maybe not always to the degree I hoped. Still, it's something! And I'm very glad that I'm whittling down the Watch Later -- I don't want that to get out of control, it stresses me out. :( So, with that in mind, let's set up tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Clean my room
2. Watch all the Hitman-related OXBox content in my Watch Later and do my best to keep up with YouTube Subs
3. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines"
4. Either play Sims 4 Newcrest Adventures and follow Emmett to work for a day, or finish up Portal Reloaded
I mean it about the OXBox thing this time -- Andy's take on Mike's featured contract is finally up, meaning I can back-to-back-to-back this nonsense. :D Plus I have a list about it that I need to watch as well. Fair amount of content, especially paired with James's Build/Buy overview for Cottage Living (the video I skipped in my Subs today), but -- I mean, we'll see what I can complete! It's one of my workout skip days, so that HAS to help a little. . .
Anyway! I have a comment to answer and possibly writing to do with a friend. Night all!
As for my day overall:
Work – A fairly quiet half-day, with me doing obits and a quality control file for billings – nothing particularly exciting! The pause is over on Monday, though, as then we’ll be allowed to start putting things on again with all the auditor reports run. For the best – can’t have stuff piling up!
Beanbags – Well, the worst of Elsa was over by the time I got home around 1:45 PM, but the weather certainly remained pretty icky and wet, soooo – no. I’m not sure WHEN the next time we’ll get to them is, as I think there’s a chance of rain straight through Tuesday. . .we’ll see!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check! Got another thirty in on the bike while watching –
A) A SimsCommunity.info video on some of the features coming to the base game with the pre-Cottage Living patch, including an upgraded version of the Calendar from Seasons (now with the ability to track all different festivals that might pop up!); the notepad under its own section instead of being part of the phone; the water tool and various decorations and effects to create ponds (including signs that allow you to prestock your ponds with fish, or stock them yourselves with fish from your inventory!); and the creation of “Lot Challenges” to move some of the more negative Lot Traits out of – well, Lot Traits (“Off The Grid” is now a Lot Challenge, for example). It’s interesting stuff, and includes some small fixes like being able to find Sims via a new menu option on their portraits in your Sim’s relationships panel. I hope this all works out!
B) Two Carl’s Sims Guides videos, both about Kits! One was a minute-long sarcastic claim that “Kits are a hit!” (with about 40% of players), the other a slightly-deeper look at the first three Kits (with an emphasis on Bust The Dust as the only kit with gameplay – the other, as Carl put it, are basically the elements of a Styled Room for kitchens and a bunch of clothes). He was not impressed, and I don’t blame him – I really don’t like this new practice of putting out micro-kits like this. At least the latest expansion is looking good so far?
2. Work some more on the HypnoKink Verse: Check, but I feel it was a bit more in the technical sense – though I did split up the “catch-all” story collection into a bunch of separate stories arranged where they would fall in the timeline. And I have officially decided to call the verse the You Belong To Me Verse – and use that as the title for the last story in the series. Because hell, if “Secundus” can name the Secundus Verse. . . I also finally have a title for the FIRST story in the series, “Learn to Love Again.” I still need titles for a bunch of the other stories, but with that, I think I can finally get writing the opener! About freaking time, huh?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and clear some more stuff out of the Watch Later: Five-sixths check – I did indeed get some stuff out of the Watch Later, but I was only able to get to four out of the five videos that were waiting for me in the Subs. Look, James Turner has been uploading a LOT lately, and some pretty long videos to boot, sooo. . .
A) Started off in the Watch Later with an Atop The Fourth Wall Marathon, because that was another thing I was behind on! We had, in order:
I. “Transformers/Ghostbusters: Ghosts of Cybertron” – Yes, that’s right, a Transformers and Ghostbusters crossover. I believe this is marginally more weird than Transformers and Back To The Future (which was also a thing – unsure if it’s in the same timeline as this story, though!) simply because of the added supernatural element, but given some of the stuff we saw in the retrospective. . . Anyway, this is an alternate Transformers timeline where the Autobots fleeing Cybertron was immediately followed by the planet getting wrecked by a mecha-version of Gozer, meaning the Autobots don’t encounter Earth until one of them picks up a signal, goes down, and encounters the Ghostbusters and Starscream’s ghost, scouting out the place for the Allspark for his true big bad master, Kreemzeek, an electrical creature that turned him and a few key Decepticons into ghosts to absorb them and gain more power. Crossover features, of course, a ECTO-1 themed Transformer (Ectotron – he scanned the original car, which got caught in a sinkhole), Starscream being frightened of Peter Venkman, and Optimus fighting Ghost!Megatron. It’s silly fun and really makes you smile. :D Yay for the good stuff that shows up on this show!
II. “The New Guardians #4” – the fourth issue of a superhero series Linkara occasionally talks about, notable mainly for the fact that it introduced us all to Snowflame, the supervillain who is explicitly superpowered by cocaine. Because reasons. This issue is a little more low-key – by which I mean it features the New Guardians (who lost their home in the last issue thanks to a child gang blowing it up) going to stay with a Green Lantern supporting character, Kilowog and see if he can help the three members who are HIV + or have AIDS, while he checks out how their powers work. Also three Japanese businessmen, having been thrown out of the house earlier by Kilowog who doesn’t want to sell his tech to them, send a polite super-robot with knee lasers to try and steal it. Also The Floronic Man, the plant-person of the group, is apparently intersex. Not nearly as fun as the last episode, but it’s not horrible. As Linkara said, the book got a new writer at this point, so this felt like a bit of a “soft reboot” for the characters. We’ll see where it goes later!
III. “Codename: Ninja #1” – a comic from Solson, who previously printed guide comics to becoming a ninja! Linkara covered those last year, so this year, he’s taking on an actual story of a hero picking up the ways of the ninja! Or, rather, a hero who picked them up some years before that we see in a mediation flashback after he’s tapped by his friend “Iron John,” Director of the CIA, to help save him from assassination attempts. It’s basically 80s schlock about the son of an American couple living in Japan who became an awesome ninja fighting to save his friend (who was already doing a pretty good job of fending off assassins), including a ninja-fight on a rooftop that ends with the opponent doing the smart thing and pulling a gun. Featured both the Ninja-Style Dancer and “Gaijin Goombah,” another YouTuber who specializes in Japanese media, including ninjas, talking about historical and cultural inaccuracies and whatnot. Interesting stuff – probably more interesting than the comic itself. XD
B) Then, this evening, we started with Fun With Shorts and “Fun With Shorts: Life in a Medieval Town Part 1!” A simple short with a simple budget detailing life in medieval times, as seen by Otto – a serf for a nobleman in a castle, sent to town to sell a cow and then buy some shoes. Yes, the appropriate jokes were made. XD It’s your typical cheap “educational” Coronet fare – silly, but filling. :p
C) After that was James Turner and Part II of “Chaz Ricks in Cottage Living Early Access!” Chaz is – not doing great. He’s wet himself in public, he’s passed out in public multiple times, and he had some distinct digestive issues from living off nothing but harvested fruit. Also he’s Sad from being lonely all the time because James doesn’t believe in letting Sims socialize. XD On the plus side, he’s FINALLY turned in a few of his village errands – he successfully watched two foxes and gave the Creature Keeper some food from the pub (which – Michael himself was visiting at the time, sooo. . .); delivered a package to the publican, Sara Scott; and delivered some food to the grocery stall owner, Kim! Everyone’s been paying him with both money and sundries – some free food, some free ingredients, it’s all good. He’s earned enough to buy some proper garden plots for his alley and is making a go at growing pumpkins and aubergines (aka eggplants). And by the end of the episode, he finally had enough for a chicken coop and a single chicken – Henther! So that’s nice. :) Maybe with a chicken to talk to he’ll feel more social. XD
D) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin for another round of Bitlife! This time with Goodat Politics, an American boy with a dream – become President! And – weirdly enough, for a Kevin video – he ACHIEVED that dream! I mean, it took a while, and involved him working up to it by becoming School Board Director, Mayor, and Governor, with stints as a junior lawyer in between. . .and marrying many old women in the hopes they would die and he’d get their money. Worked for the first two, but the third held on through the presidency apparently out of spite. XD But Goodat won in a narrow victory and – promptly got himself impeached via book writing, forcing Kevin to pay real money to redo the election and actually serve out a full term. XD He lost the reelection (to a fascist, oh boy), then tried to kill his next wife for more money, managed to get a good lawyer to get himself off once bribing the police didn’t work, then ran for reelection again and lost again. He then tried to kill another wife, got caught and convicted, escaped jail, and fled to Estonia, where he got a job as a judge before dying at the age of 90. Honestly, one of Kevin’s more successful lives, really! XD
E) Then we ended with GrayStillPlays and more GTA V stunt boards! Today’s offering was a series of extremely hard parkour jumps, starting with a super-steep ramp and proceeding through various tightropes, navigation of various obstacles (including Gray’s beloved wind turbines, and a trip through a perpetual explosion that just MURDERED his FPS), and trips through a series of tubes. And to add to the weirdness, Gray’s VEHICLES? Well, they started out as your average rowboat and went through beached humpback, sailboat, giant party yacht, and then back to the average rowboat only with fishing rods attached. None of them drove particularly well, so it took Gray quite a while just to get past jump #1. But he persevered and flew his fleet of ridiculous sea vehicles to the finish line! Every time I think he can’t find a weirder board. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – again, Victor Luvs Alice was fine, so I just had to plop some reblogs into Valice Multiverse (no asks or threads going on today!). Took a while to find some good Corpse Bride stuff, but I just got that completed, so yay.
5. Play Portal Reloaded: Check! Did this after I got home and got situated – played through Chambers 22 through 24! And yes, again, had to use walkthroughs, though I always gave it the good college try before I looked, and I came pretty close to just getting the solution on Chamber 24! But we’re almost at the grand finale, it looks like, and – well. Basically, the plot of this game is that you’re a nameless test subject running this time travel course in the period just before and what I assume to be just after the original Portal (there’s a twenty-year difference between past and future, according to the announcer). And the announcer just told me that my purpose as the test subject on this course?
Go after the rogue test subject that caused the facility to break down and stop them.
Guys, I don’t wanna fistfight Chell, I don’t think that’s gonna work out for me. XD Well, I guess we’ll see what actually happens sometime this weekend. . .
So I managed to hit everything, though maybe not always to the degree I hoped. Still, it's something! And I'm very glad that I'm whittling down the Watch Later -- I don't want that to get out of control, it stresses me out. :( So, with that in mind, let's set up tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Clean my room
2. Watch all the Hitman-related OXBox content in my Watch Later and do my best to keep up with YouTube Subs
3. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines"
4. Either play Sims 4 Newcrest Adventures and follow Emmett to work for a day, or finish up Portal Reloaded
I mean it about the OXBox thing this time -- Andy's take on Mike's featured contract is finally up, meaning I can back-to-back-to-back this nonsense. :D Plus I have a list about it that I need to watch as well. Fair amount of content, especially paired with James's Build/Buy overview for Cottage Living (the video I skipped in my Subs today), but -- I mean, we'll see what I can complete! It's one of my workout skip days, so that HAS to help a little. . .
Anyway! I have a comment to answer and possibly writing to do with a friend. Night all!
