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More Rain Thursday
Aug. 5th, 2021 11:30 pmAnother gray and gloomy one today, with periods of heavy rain. Looks like we got around 2 inches ourselves, so that's not TOO bad. And tomorrow it's supposed to dry out some, so fingers crossed! I mean, I really shouldn't complain about our weather, it's absolutely awful elsewhere in the world, but -- you bitch about what you know.
Definitely no room for complaint regarding my to-do lists today, though --
1. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again": Check! Got another page on this, with everyone sitting down to hear Victor’s side of the whole “Corpse Bride” tale. Started him off with the basics – “my family’s the richest in this tiny village, the local aristocrats were flat broke, hence why I was arranged to be married to their daughter sight-unseen.” Picking up next time with Alice objecting to the “sight-unseen” part, because who does that? (Victor: “People who think that it’s a point in the marriage’s favor that the groom has never spoken to the bride.” Alice: “They sound like arses.” Victor: “Yes, my parents aren’t very nice.”)
2. Wipe the Sims 4 videos out of the Watch Later and keep up with YouTube Subs: Check! The Watch Later is officially clear, and I am completely caught up with everything I wanted to watch this evening –
A) Started with a pair of onlyabidoang’s videos:
I. “The Sims 4: PONDS, GROUP COOKING, FOOD DELIVERY, AND MORE! (July 2021 Patch Update)” – yes, all right, I’ve already seen videos on this, but I like watching his take on things. Especially since I can learn new things – did you know that the water tool can be used on ROOMS as well as holes in terrain? Yup, you can make a room full of water if you want, or even put a little water in an otherwise-normal room, and your Sims will still be able to use the items in there! And some careful manipulation of terrain can help you create genuinely-underwater rooms, which is awesome. :D He also showed off “before” and “after” clips of the calendar (I knew they’d jazzed it up for base game, but it was still nice to see the difference), the new sliders for terrain paint and manipulation tools, group cooking, children gardening – it was very informative and I liked it quite a bit! :) Oh, and he was very jazzed to see that cowplants can dance again after complaining in a previous video about how that animation was broken. XD
II. “The Sims 4 Cottage Living: 10 NEW FEATURES You Might Not Know” – and for more information on the current pack that’s taking everyone by storm. . .this one was mostly stuff I already knew from watching people’s LPs and reading articles, but I did learn that a good quick way to get the Golden and Evil Chicken powers temporarily for Sims is to have a cow and feed them the appropriate treats – apparently, drinking the resulting milks is as good as eating the appropriate eggs! He also went over all the different cross-stitch patterns you can learn from animals and from errands (including one from Agnes that – apparently isn’t QUITE finished), the long-term benefits of errands (like getting onto the Mayor’s jam mailing list!), and the two deaths from angry animals you can get from this pack (piss off chickens or rabbits enough and you’re not going to have a good time). Also you can size up chickens and rabbits and have kaiju-size animals if you want. XD Fun times!
B) Then it was onto the latest Plumbella video: “THE SIMS 4 IS GETTING A MAJOR UPDATE OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING!!” AKA Plumbella squees over the news that, apparently, the people over at EA-xis are going to be updating some of the base game townies with a bit more lore (and, uh, quietly fixing some skintones on Sims that have mysteriously gotten lighter over time. . .not that they directly ADMITTED that, but they alluded to it with “visual changes” mentioned). She’s hopeful that it’ll be something that gives The Sims 4 a sense of being on a timeline, but she doesn’t think it’ll actually go that deep. She’s just happy to get ANY updates, even if they’re only to new saves (which is how I think it would have to be done – just setting up better pre-made relationships and taking advantage of sentiments). She also discussed the upcoming “game pack refresh” that they hinted at and which pack she thinks it could be – either Dine Out (the one everyone wants fixed because while it’s a cool idea restaurants are broken as hell apparently), Spa Day (largely irrelevant to Plumbella, but the language used to refer to the refresh makes me think it’s the most likely candidate – “relaxation” was mentioned), or Strangerville (because that’s a very divisive pack and maybe updating it would make it better?). My personal theory is that it’s Spa Day, with maybe a SMALL chance of it being Outdoor Retreat because that was the first “vacation” pack. We’ll see what happens, won’t we? I just hope the team doesn’t disappoint her. Or us.
C) Then it was onto James Turner for a surprisingly short video today, with another of his patented Simsperiments – namely, he looked at all the comments telling him to turn auto-lights on for all rooms in his homes and went, “okay, but how much does it actually save you?” So he got a vampire Sim, moved her into an empty lot in Del Sol Valley, and did some tests. Turns out an empty lot will have a single simoleon in power bills. The house he chose to plop there with all lights on? About $343 in power, not using any other items with electricity. With auto-lights (and making sure his Sim moved from room to room – and manually turning on and off some glitchy lights in the living room)? About $198 in power, a roughly $145 difference. So it’s not NOTHING, but it’s also not HUGE. James correctly pointed out that the real killer is forgetting you have expensive items in the house – or, worse, your household inventory, as those directly increase your lot taxes (he demonstrated by putting two $10,000 computers in her house, and then her household inventory – the computers raised the lot taxes by pretty much a full $1,000). So while it’ll make a difference for a Sim with pretty much NO money, having auto-lights in all rooms is not a game-changer in the long run, and it really comes down to personal preference. And James likes having lights on so he can, you know, see his houses. XD Though he does auto-light bedrooms, which is my own personal preference. Let Sims sleep in darkness, but otherwise, let me see the damn house!
D) Then, this evening, we started with another OXBox list video! Yeah, they uploaded another one today: “7 Weird Weapons That Proved Surprisingly Deadly!” A list of strange but powerful weaponry from video games, introduced by Jane holding her own big fuck-off sword Frostmourne (I believe it’s from WoW). XD But yes, from the “Extraterrestrial Chicken On a Stick” from Dying Light’s alien-themed DLC (literally a cardboard cut-out of a cartoony chicken taped to a stick that can somehow BEHEAD ZOMBIES), to the Dung Pie from Dark Souls (a pile of feces that can kill enemies through toxic status ailments – and if you make yourself toxiced, worse poisons can’t affect you), to a staff in Assassin’s Creed Origins that is literally a giant Q-Tip (but a legendary one – and very good for beating enemies up to get your health back). Even the Thirst Zapper from Fallout 4 Nuka-World got a mention – though, weirdly, only in the context of beating Colter in the boss fight at the end of the Gauntlet. What, seriously, no mention of it being able to shoot weaponized Nuka-Cola that can blow up enemies with the right ammo? O.o Did you guys not get that far in the DLC?
E) And then we had Call Me Kevin and Project Zomboid, a survival game set in the middle of the zombie apocalypse! Kevin was inspired to pick the game up (again; apparently he’s played before) by another YouTube channel that did challenges in it, and one of them was to survive as long as possible staying in your own neighborhood! Kevin did his best, creating a hard-of-hearing, constantly-thirsty handy farmer who drinks out of toilets to quench his parched throat and having him roam around his immediate neighborhood looking for skill books and nails. And finding mainly paperclips. XD He did manage to survive a little while, fighting off zombies with a pool cue, traded for a baseball bat, and finally traded for a fire ax, and getting his carpentry up enough to fully barricade his house and create a noninfected-people-only entrance and exit up a sheet rope to a second-story window. He even had enough food and drink! But, sadly, his own desires to see the zombies off via the medium of firebombing his neighbors’ houses with molotov cocktails brought him down – not that he burned himself to death, but rather he got bitten while luring zombies to a house he was burning. Kevin decided his guy wasn’t going to go down without taking tons of zombies with him and lured a huge crowd to his place before setting it on fire and swinging his ax wildly before the burning horde took him down. A good death, if not a good life. :p
3. Play Sims 4 and finish up the Brown-Kosperov cycle in Newcrest Adventures: Check! I believe I mentioned last time that today’s play session would be Love Day – I had Emmett and Nikal take care of some basic needs, then go out on a date to Henford-on-Bagley’s Isle of Volpe National Park! They had a good time – hung out in the picnic area chatting before Nikal made them some fruit cobbler, then flew over to the ruins to exchange flowers and have some cute photos in the little rotunda thing. I had to have them eat the Flutterberries in Nikal’s inventory to actually make them FLIRTY, but they still had a Gold-Level date. Emmett even got a chance to actually try out his Floralorial spell on the local Chocoberries! After that, they took a quick swim in the Bagley river, before I sent them over to Glimmerbrook to visit the Magical Realm. Nikal learned the Copypasto spell and the Potion of Perk Purging Recipe from Simeon Silversweater while she was there, while Emmett challenged wandering spellcaster Fetia to a duel (I think she actually challenged him via phone last time I played, but it was right in the middle of the family dinner scene I set up, so I had to turn her down), and scored a decisive victory and knowledge of the spell Furio! :) So yeah, a very successful Love Day for both of them. This officially wraps up their cycle – now I just have to spend a final week with Chell, Wheatley, and Geeker! And hope against hope I can some how complete Wheatley’s career in that time, as I would like to max it out if I can. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check – another session on the bike, and with Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough! I finished Episode 6 today – Past!Jon finished clearing out the Lexington Super-Duper Mart (emerging from the employee garage beneath the store) and then decided to listen to the Military Broadcast signal he’d picked up while dealing with Corvega. That led Miss Jon and Dogmeat into Cambridge, where they cleared out a ton of feral ghouls and Miss Jon stepped on a few frag mines because Past!Jon wasn’t paying attention, as always. XD She eventually worked her way around to the police station to meet up with Paladin Danse and help him out with his ghoul problem. Miss Jon asked him what he was all about, telling him she was from Vault 111 and getting him to agree to pay her for helping him out with the upcoming ArcJet mission (Jon being pleasantly surprised she managed to pass an orange speech check – she’d been having trouble with those, even with her Charisma-boosting hat). We ended in the police station itself, with Miss Jon looting and listening to one of Scribe Haylen’s tapes about her doubts about the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel – Danse talked a noble mission about protecting humanity from the horrors of science gone haywire, but Haylen thinks the BOS is often more militaristic and demanding than it needs to be. . .still, Miss Jon is willing to go with Danse to ArcJet in Episode 7, so we’ll see how that goes! Looks like this’ll be when she starts learning about synths!
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check! For VictorLuvsAlice, I spent most of the afternoon after watching all my Sims 4 videos working on a very silly Venn diagram connecting Sims 4, Fallout 4, and Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines to post tomorrow – mostly so I could make a joke about all of them being “janky piece of shit my beloved.” Look, I don’t control my sense of humor. Or my taste in video games. XD Also reblogged the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast for Saturday, and put a new, very nice drawing of Piper Wright in my drafts for later.
Over on Valice Multiverse, semi-busy day – four asks, one thread reply by the time I was done this evening. Nothing too spectacular, but more than I’ve been getting lately, sooo. . .
Additionally:
-->Made some backups this morning, prompted by my computer needing another update, so yay, at least I’ve got that done for this month.
-->Answered my one FF.net friend’s latest PM, yay for it not taking an entire week for once!
Not too shabby at all -- again, might have liked to have gotten more done with the tumblr queues for VictorLuvsAlice, but -- well, honestly, I quite like my stupid Venn diagram and consider it worth it. XD
Okay, time to answer my comment, then get ready for bed. Last "official" day of my vacation starts tomorrow (aka the last day I had to take the time off for -- past 1:30 tomorrow afternoon, I'm in "long weekend we all got" territory). It's been a good week, overall, and I'm hoping the last four days keep up the streak! Let me set up my to-dos:
1. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs
3. Either play more Bloodlines and clear out everything regarding the Clinic, or see about restarting Fallout 4
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
Yeah, that middle one should be interesting. . .we'll see how it pans out if I pick option 2. Night!
Definitely no room for complaint regarding my to-do lists today, though --
1. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again": Check! Got another page on this, with everyone sitting down to hear Victor’s side of the whole “Corpse Bride” tale. Started him off with the basics – “my family’s the richest in this tiny village, the local aristocrats were flat broke, hence why I was arranged to be married to their daughter sight-unseen.” Picking up next time with Alice objecting to the “sight-unseen” part, because who does that? (Victor: “People who think that it’s a point in the marriage’s favor that the groom has never spoken to the bride.” Alice: “They sound like arses.” Victor: “Yes, my parents aren’t very nice.”)
2. Wipe the Sims 4 videos out of the Watch Later and keep up with YouTube Subs: Check! The Watch Later is officially clear, and I am completely caught up with everything I wanted to watch this evening –
A) Started with a pair of onlyabidoang’s videos:
I. “The Sims 4: PONDS, GROUP COOKING, FOOD DELIVERY, AND MORE! (July 2021 Patch Update)” – yes, all right, I’ve already seen videos on this, but I like watching his take on things. Especially since I can learn new things – did you know that the water tool can be used on ROOMS as well as holes in terrain? Yup, you can make a room full of water if you want, or even put a little water in an otherwise-normal room, and your Sims will still be able to use the items in there! And some careful manipulation of terrain can help you create genuinely-underwater rooms, which is awesome. :D He also showed off “before” and “after” clips of the calendar (I knew they’d jazzed it up for base game, but it was still nice to see the difference), the new sliders for terrain paint and manipulation tools, group cooking, children gardening – it was very informative and I liked it quite a bit! :) Oh, and he was very jazzed to see that cowplants can dance again after complaining in a previous video about how that animation was broken. XD
II. “The Sims 4 Cottage Living: 10 NEW FEATURES You Might Not Know” – and for more information on the current pack that’s taking everyone by storm. . .this one was mostly stuff I already knew from watching people’s LPs and reading articles, but I did learn that a good quick way to get the Golden and Evil Chicken powers temporarily for Sims is to have a cow and feed them the appropriate treats – apparently, drinking the resulting milks is as good as eating the appropriate eggs! He also went over all the different cross-stitch patterns you can learn from animals and from errands (including one from Agnes that – apparently isn’t QUITE finished), the long-term benefits of errands (like getting onto the Mayor’s jam mailing list!), and the two deaths from angry animals you can get from this pack (piss off chickens or rabbits enough and you’re not going to have a good time). Also you can size up chickens and rabbits and have kaiju-size animals if you want. XD Fun times!
B) Then it was onto the latest Plumbella video: “THE SIMS 4 IS GETTING A MAJOR UPDATE OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING!!” AKA Plumbella squees over the news that, apparently, the people over at EA-xis are going to be updating some of the base game townies with a bit more lore (and, uh, quietly fixing some skintones on Sims that have mysteriously gotten lighter over time. . .not that they directly ADMITTED that, but they alluded to it with “visual changes” mentioned). She’s hopeful that it’ll be something that gives The Sims 4 a sense of being on a timeline, but she doesn’t think it’ll actually go that deep. She’s just happy to get ANY updates, even if they’re only to new saves (which is how I think it would have to be done – just setting up better pre-made relationships and taking advantage of sentiments). She also discussed the upcoming “game pack refresh” that they hinted at and which pack she thinks it could be – either Dine Out (the one everyone wants fixed because while it’s a cool idea restaurants are broken as hell apparently), Spa Day (largely irrelevant to Plumbella, but the language used to refer to the refresh makes me think it’s the most likely candidate – “relaxation” was mentioned), or Strangerville (because that’s a very divisive pack and maybe updating it would make it better?). My personal theory is that it’s Spa Day, with maybe a SMALL chance of it being Outdoor Retreat because that was the first “vacation” pack. We’ll see what happens, won’t we? I just hope the team doesn’t disappoint her. Or us.
C) Then it was onto James Turner for a surprisingly short video today, with another of his patented Simsperiments – namely, he looked at all the comments telling him to turn auto-lights on for all rooms in his homes and went, “okay, but how much does it actually save you?” So he got a vampire Sim, moved her into an empty lot in Del Sol Valley, and did some tests. Turns out an empty lot will have a single simoleon in power bills. The house he chose to plop there with all lights on? About $343 in power, not using any other items with electricity. With auto-lights (and making sure his Sim moved from room to room – and manually turning on and off some glitchy lights in the living room)? About $198 in power, a roughly $145 difference. So it’s not NOTHING, but it’s also not HUGE. James correctly pointed out that the real killer is forgetting you have expensive items in the house – or, worse, your household inventory, as those directly increase your lot taxes (he demonstrated by putting two $10,000 computers in her house, and then her household inventory – the computers raised the lot taxes by pretty much a full $1,000). So while it’ll make a difference for a Sim with pretty much NO money, having auto-lights in all rooms is not a game-changer in the long run, and it really comes down to personal preference. And James likes having lights on so he can, you know, see his houses. XD Though he does auto-light bedrooms, which is my own personal preference. Let Sims sleep in darkness, but otherwise, let me see the damn house!
D) Then, this evening, we started with another OXBox list video! Yeah, they uploaded another one today: “7 Weird Weapons That Proved Surprisingly Deadly!” A list of strange but powerful weaponry from video games, introduced by Jane holding her own big fuck-off sword Frostmourne (I believe it’s from WoW). XD But yes, from the “Extraterrestrial Chicken On a Stick” from Dying Light’s alien-themed DLC (literally a cardboard cut-out of a cartoony chicken taped to a stick that can somehow BEHEAD ZOMBIES), to the Dung Pie from Dark Souls (a pile of feces that can kill enemies through toxic status ailments – and if you make yourself toxiced, worse poisons can’t affect you), to a staff in Assassin’s Creed Origins that is literally a giant Q-Tip (but a legendary one – and very good for beating enemies up to get your health back). Even the Thirst Zapper from Fallout 4 Nuka-World got a mention – though, weirdly, only in the context of beating Colter in the boss fight at the end of the Gauntlet. What, seriously, no mention of it being able to shoot weaponized Nuka-Cola that can blow up enemies with the right ammo? O.o Did you guys not get that far in the DLC?
E) And then we had Call Me Kevin and Project Zomboid, a survival game set in the middle of the zombie apocalypse! Kevin was inspired to pick the game up (again; apparently he’s played before) by another YouTube channel that did challenges in it, and one of them was to survive as long as possible staying in your own neighborhood! Kevin did his best, creating a hard-of-hearing, constantly-thirsty handy farmer who drinks out of toilets to quench his parched throat and having him roam around his immediate neighborhood looking for skill books and nails. And finding mainly paperclips. XD He did manage to survive a little while, fighting off zombies with a pool cue, traded for a baseball bat, and finally traded for a fire ax, and getting his carpentry up enough to fully barricade his house and create a noninfected-people-only entrance and exit up a sheet rope to a second-story window. He even had enough food and drink! But, sadly, his own desires to see the zombies off via the medium of firebombing his neighbors’ houses with molotov cocktails brought him down – not that he burned himself to death, but rather he got bitten while luring zombies to a house he was burning. Kevin decided his guy wasn’t going to go down without taking tons of zombies with him and lured a huge crowd to his place before setting it on fire and swinging his ax wildly before the burning horde took him down. A good death, if not a good life. :p
3. Play Sims 4 and finish up the Brown-Kosperov cycle in Newcrest Adventures: Check! I believe I mentioned last time that today’s play session would be Love Day – I had Emmett and Nikal take care of some basic needs, then go out on a date to Henford-on-Bagley’s Isle of Volpe National Park! They had a good time – hung out in the picnic area chatting before Nikal made them some fruit cobbler, then flew over to the ruins to exchange flowers and have some cute photos in the little rotunda thing. I had to have them eat the Flutterberries in Nikal’s inventory to actually make them FLIRTY, but they still had a Gold-Level date. Emmett even got a chance to actually try out his Floralorial spell on the local Chocoberries! After that, they took a quick swim in the Bagley river, before I sent them over to Glimmerbrook to visit the Magical Realm. Nikal learned the Copypasto spell and the Potion of Perk Purging Recipe from Simeon Silversweater while she was there, while Emmett challenged wandering spellcaster Fetia to a duel (I think she actually challenged him via phone last time I played, but it was right in the middle of the family dinner scene I set up, so I had to turn her down), and scored a decisive victory and knowledge of the spell Furio! :) So yeah, a very successful Love Day for both of them. This officially wraps up their cycle – now I just have to spend a final week with Chell, Wheatley, and Geeker! And hope against hope I can some how complete Wheatley’s career in that time, as I would like to max it out if I can. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check – another session on the bike, and with Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough! I finished Episode 6 today – Past!Jon finished clearing out the Lexington Super-Duper Mart (emerging from the employee garage beneath the store) and then decided to listen to the Military Broadcast signal he’d picked up while dealing with Corvega. That led Miss Jon and Dogmeat into Cambridge, where they cleared out a ton of feral ghouls and Miss Jon stepped on a few frag mines because Past!Jon wasn’t paying attention, as always. XD She eventually worked her way around to the police station to meet up with Paladin Danse and help him out with his ghoul problem. Miss Jon asked him what he was all about, telling him she was from Vault 111 and getting him to agree to pay her for helping him out with the upcoming ArcJet mission (Jon being pleasantly surprised she managed to pass an orange speech check – she’d been having trouble with those, even with her Charisma-boosting hat). We ended in the police station itself, with Miss Jon looting and listening to one of Scribe Haylen’s tapes about her doubts about the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel – Danse talked a noble mission about protecting humanity from the horrors of science gone haywire, but Haylen thinks the BOS is often more militaristic and demanding than it needs to be. . .still, Miss Jon is willing to go with Danse to ArcJet in Episode 7, so we’ll see how that goes! Looks like this’ll be when she starts learning about synths!
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check! For VictorLuvsAlice, I spent most of the afternoon after watching all my Sims 4 videos working on a very silly Venn diagram connecting Sims 4, Fallout 4, and Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines to post tomorrow – mostly so I could make a joke about all of them being “janky piece of shit my beloved.” Look, I don’t control my sense of humor. Or my taste in video games. XD Also reblogged the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast for Saturday, and put a new, very nice drawing of Piper Wright in my drafts for later.
Over on Valice Multiverse, semi-busy day – four asks, one thread reply by the time I was done this evening. Nothing too spectacular, but more than I’ve been getting lately, sooo. . .
Additionally:
-->Made some backups this morning, prompted by my computer needing another update, so yay, at least I’ve got that done for this month.
-->Answered my one FF.net friend’s latest PM, yay for it not taking an entire week for once!
Not too shabby at all -- again, might have liked to have gotten more done with the tumblr queues for VictorLuvsAlice, but -- well, honestly, I quite like my stupid Venn diagram and consider it worth it. XD
Okay, time to answer my comment, then get ready for bed. Last "official" day of my vacation starts tomorrow (aka the last day I had to take the time off for -- past 1:30 tomorrow afternoon, I'm in "long weekend we all got" territory). It's been a good week, overall, and I'm hoping the last four days keep up the streak! Let me set up my to-dos:
1. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs
3. Either play more Bloodlines and clear out everything regarding the Clinic, or see about restarting Fallout 4
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
Yeah, that middle one should be interesting. . .we'll see how it pans out if I pick option 2. Night!
