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Back To A Half Friday
Aug. 13th, 2021 11:20 pmAlways nice to have the chance to leave work early. . .less nice when it's boiling outside, but my car has good AC and I let it air out for a second before getting in, so it wasn't uncomfortably warm for more than a couple of minutes. And I've spent the rest of my time in an office or a house with AC so -- very survivable! Now we just have to get past the thunderstorms tomorrow. . .must make sure my iPad has adequate charge. It's supposed to be later in the evening, so hopefully I can still do video-gaming and all that, but -- yeah. We'll see!
In the meantime, let's go over today's to-dos, shall we?
Work – Fairly quiet – had a call from a donor looking to make a credit card payment, did some reversals, did the GL, did some obits. Nothing too horrifying. I’m just glad there were no days this week that made me stress out too much!
To-Do List –
1. Play some more Bloodlines: Check! Did this pretty much right after coming home and changing – Crystal is now officially done with the Santa Monica-specific missions! She managed to suck up to Therese enough to successfully claim she didn’t slash the paintings, defused the diner ambush with her Dominate (after I, uh, nearly set off a firefight in there the first time), then sided with Therese in the ensuing argument between the sisters as Crystal is going to be my pro-Strauss-Cam character and we may as well start early. Let me see some new takes on the dialogue too, soo. . . After that it was over to Bertram, and from there to the warehouse. Crystal successfully snuck in past all the guys (with a little help from her “Command” ability, and – after a couple of reloads – moving very fast once she dropped down from the roof and hit the catwalk leading to the middle office) and planted the Astrolite without being seen.
. . .And then it came to getting OUT of the warehouse, and that proved to be a bit of a ballache. Mostly because there’s guys who can see you EVERYWHERE as you try to sneak out, and Crystal, being a Tremere, doesn’t have the option of Obfuscate to make things easier. I had to try like five, six times to get out without being shot to pieces, and even when I finally came across a successful strategy (hit two of the three guys in the office to my left with “Command” to distract them just long enough to me to sneak around guy three and out the door before I was seen, then just hit another dude near the front with the same thing before booking it) I still got noticed and took a few bullets. But I managed to make it back through the trains and blow up the place, and that’s the main thing! *whew* Crystal met Beckett, caught back up with Tung and got his side of the feud with Therese, and then headed back to the Asylum to get some blood – I’ve dropped some points in Dominate (for the “Brain Wipe” ability) and Intelligence, but I decided to take a moment and also up Subterfuge and Appearance to get up my Seduction and actually use the “blood dolls” (the women you can seduce and feed from) in the clubs for meals. I’ve never done this before (my characters are alley-stalkers and rat-eaters typically), so it’s an interesting change. I mean, she already Dominated car-crash guy into a meal, sooo. . . Crystal may have a different way of dealing with Romero’s “needs” later. XD Left it by the cab – next time, we go Downtown! :D
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Alice has officially arrived at the Ocean House Hotel (I cut out the actual wading through the sewers because it’s not THAT interesting), and experienced its first two jump scares – the light exploding by the front doors, and the little forklift loader thing running itself into the shipping container office where you find the keys for the front door. She’s weathered both well – Wonderland, not so much. XD Hatter, Hare, and Dormy were pretty freaked out by that last one. Fortunately they’ll do a bit better inside the house itself.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and watch the OXBox/OXtra lists in my Watch Later: Check! Exactly what I wanted to get watched today, hooray –
A) Started out with some James Turner and the third episode of “Every Lot Challenge” (where James has every residential lot challenge plus all three “attract something here” lot traits on a haunted house lot in StrangerVille). James has set an “end game” for this challenge – every time he gets promoted in his job from here on out, he gets to remove one lot challenge (randomly selected with a number generator). This seems reasonable – especially since having all these lot challenges on is going to make it a task and a half to get promoted. XD Semaj is doing his best amid all the chaos, though! And he did make a bit of progress today – after James traded his TV for a chess table (and got rid of his stove so he would have to live off of salads, getting him a garden plot to grow lettuce in for same), he managed to get the requisite number of Logic points he needed to get one promotion! The random number generator decreed that challenge 5 would be removed – “Grody,” the one that gives Sims a chance to become nauseous after eating or using the bathroom. AKA, besides “Gremlins” (which doesn’t fire anymore because of how many people are always on his lot), the one lot challenge that wasn’t really affecting Semaj’s life. The RNG is a cruel mistress.
As for what else – well, Semaj is either constantly being attacked by plasma bats, spiders, or bees, or running around terrified because of cursed objects. His attempt to hire a maid to clean his house for a day resulted in her being distracted by a lava bomb fire (understandable) and the sultry dancing of the firefighters after they put out the fire (also understandable, the hell?), then fixating on the puddles from the broken bathroom appliances so nothing much was done for a $160 payout. His wind turbines keep breaking, which is bad for power production but good for handiness skill. He keeps swapping out aspirations in a desperate attempt to get the points needed to get the “Brave” personality trait so he’s not scared all the time. He’s constantly either having no fun, no social, or no energy (though he did manage to fully upgrade his bed, at least). He can’t even find any peace to read books at the library. And James keeps making him go to work on holidays because I think he forgets about the concept of having holidays off. XD It’s – it’s rough. And hilarious to watch. XD
B) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin and Fireworks Mania! As you might imagine, it’s a game about setting off fireworks – though it doesn’t look like you do official shows. Rather, you just sandbox in one of three areas (a town, a ranch, or a blank slab) and set off however many fireworks in whatever combination you want. You are a random fireworks enthusiast!
Or, in Kevin’s case, you’re a random fireworks crimes enthusiast, because he dedicated this episode to blowing up all the things. Filling up the gas station in town with propane and setting it off with a firework? Yup. Filling a church with firework boxes and setting that off, then sticking a stop sign in the ruins? Yup. Stuffing a house full of flamingos and propane before setting it off and sending flamingos flying everywhere? Yuuup. Setting up a chain reaction on the ranch to try and explode it all at once? Yuuuuuup (though he didn’t quite succeed, there were a few preliminary fires as a few fireworks went off prematurely). Attempting to crash the game by blowing up the whole town in one massive propane-and-firework-cake-fueled go? HELL YES (and the game DIDN’T CRASH! Went down to one FPS, but still worked. I am freaking impressed, as was Kevin). So yeah, if you want to explode all the things without consequences, this is the game for you! Just, uh, maybe bring earplugs. XD
C) Then, after a break, we had this week’s Fun With Shorts – the second half of “Life In A Medieval Town!” Otto the serf visited the shoe shop where his new buddy Hans works, saw a bit about how shoes were made, picked up the nobleman’s new shoes, then headed home, all without remarking once on how Hans didn’t get any breakfast and was threatened with a beating. XD Yeah, Josh made sure to note how they basically skimmed over a bunch of the less-great aspects of living in a medieval town. . . Also, fave riff from the end: “The beast that would evolve into capitalism had emerged from hell.” XD I think we can all relate to that at this point. :p
D) Then it was over to the Watch Later to hit up OXtra and OXBox for their latest lists:
I. OXtra, “7 Hilariously Simple Ways You Skipped a Whole Level: Commenter Edition” – they’ve already discussed the ability to skip whole levels once, now it’s time for the commenters to weigh in! Like brute-forcing a lock you’re supposed to get help with solving by resolving a gang war in Dishonored 2 – or, using a cheat sheet on the wiki to figure out the riddle that will help you open the lock. (Or, if you’re like Ellen, just solving it yourself and being smug about it.) Or leaping a large gap in the first level of Human Fall Over just right to skip to the end of the mansion you’re supposed to platform through! Or sliding through a tiny tunnel in the horror movie mansion level of A Hat In Time to reach the final chest early! Or, getting the final boss of Two Worlds to follow you into town at the very start of the game and laugh in glee as the assembled villagers gang up on him and kill him – skipping not just the first level, but pretty much THE ENTIRE GAME. Now THAT’S a skip. XD
II. OXBox, “7 Real-World Prizes You Could Win in Games (But Probably Wouldn't)” – a bunch of real-life items that you could win for being super-good at video games! Or, well, items you could theoretically win, as most of these prizes were either part of canceled contests (e.g., the Swordquest series that would have led to a one player getting a silver and gold gem-encrusted sword, stopped in its tracks by the infamous Crash of 1983 – though two players DID receive two of the lesser prizes, one of which still exists today in the winner’s collection) or didn’t actually amount to anything (the winner of Curiosity by Peter Molyneux tapped his way to the center of a virtual cube to discover he’d won 1% of the profits of the studio’s NEXT game, Godus – only for that to never see a proper release and the poor guy to get NOTHING). The best bet for gamers looking for real-world prizes? Get really, really good at the Aim For Cash arcade light gun game, which was guaranteed to spit out 40 pounds sterling per game to people who actually knew how to play it. As Mike pointed out, this was the only game where an arcade owner could LOSE money from people repeatedly playing it. Why can’t we have more games like that? :p
E) And finally we had more GrayStillPlays and Happy Wheels! Today was a day of challenges that claimed to be impossible but. . .like a ramp jump that he won in two pieces because he was still technically alive and connected via his small intestines. Or a yeet across a gap of pain with the mother and two children that he won despite being completely gibbed. Or the “avoid the spinning blades at head height” challenge that he won via going through it so fast nothing got a chance to stab him. Or the jet fall that he won by falling down the side because the creator forgot to put jets there. XD Though there were a few that required skill – like “Occupy The World,” a variation on the pogo-fight where Pogo Man had to defeat various countries armed with blades, without falling into the water between them because insta-death. THAT one took Gray a while just to figure out how best to land on each country. And of course we had both a level as a goofy Godzilla smashing apart buildings, and a level running from a somewhat-higher-production-values Godzilla and his smashy limbs. Just your average day for Gray in this game!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – again, since Victor Luvs Alice is set, just had Valice Multiverse, and I only had one ask reply there – I threw in some reblogs of some VTMB fanart and FO4 gifs to jazz it up a bit. And, over on Valice Multiverse, there were a few fun things on my dash (like posts complaining how hard writing is) that I threw into the drafts, so that’s nice. :)
I'm quite happy with that last one, actually -- gives me a few more options for when I'm having trouble coming up with my own content. A healthy drafts section is a happy drafts section! :p
Okay, and as it's about time for Friday Night Writing Thing (Now With Vampires), I'd best wrap up here. To-do list for tomorrow:
1. Write some more on “Learn To Love Again"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and watch the Plumbella video in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and start the Wheatley/Chell/Geeker Week
4. Get in a workout
Gonna keep it to that because, well, how much of it I can get done depends on the weather. At least if I have to skip Sims I have a great buffer in place. . .but hoping I don't have to, because I'd like to finish up Newcrest and start concentrating on new saves. Want to play my challenges, darn it. :p Well, after I finish writing both up. . .
And now I need to answer my comment and head off to the writing thing. Night all!
In the meantime, let's go over today's to-dos, shall we?
Work – Fairly quiet – had a call from a donor looking to make a credit card payment, did some reversals, did the GL, did some obits. Nothing too horrifying. I’m just glad there were no days this week that made me stress out too much!
To-Do List –
1. Play some more Bloodlines: Check! Did this pretty much right after coming home and changing – Crystal is now officially done with the Santa Monica-specific missions! She managed to suck up to Therese enough to successfully claim she didn’t slash the paintings, defused the diner ambush with her Dominate (after I, uh, nearly set off a firefight in there the first time), then sided with Therese in the ensuing argument between the sisters as Crystal is going to be my pro-Strauss-Cam character and we may as well start early. Let me see some new takes on the dialogue too, soo. . . After that it was over to Bertram, and from there to the warehouse. Crystal successfully snuck in past all the guys (with a little help from her “Command” ability, and – after a couple of reloads – moving very fast once she dropped down from the roof and hit the catwalk leading to the middle office) and planted the Astrolite without being seen.
. . .And then it came to getting OUT of the warehouse, and that proved to be a bit of a ballache. Mostly because there’s guys who can see you EVERYWHERE as you try to sneak out, and Crystal, being a Tremere, doesn’t have the option of Obfuscate to make things easier. I had to try like five, six times to get out without being shot to pieces, and even when I finally came across a successful strategy (hit two of the three guys in the office to my left with “Command” to distract them just long enough to me to sneak around guy three and out the door before I was seen, then just hit another dude near the front with the same thing before booking it) I still got noticed and took a few bullets. But I managed to make it back through the trains and blow up the place, and that’s the main thing! *whew* Crystal met Beckett, caught back up with Tung and got his side of the feud with Therese, and then headed back to the Asylum to get some blood – I’ve dropped some points in Dominate (for the “Brain Wipe” ability) and Intelligence, but I decided to take a moment and also up Subterfuge and Appearance to get up my Seduction and actually use the “blood dolls” (the women you can seduce and feed from) in the clubs for meals. I’ve never done this before (my characters are alley-stalkers and rat-eaters typically), so it’s an interesting change. I mean, she already Dominated car-crash guy into a meal, sooo. . . Crystal may have a different way of dealing with Romero’s “needs” later. XD Left it by the cab – next time, we go Downtown! :D
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Alice has officially arrived at the Ocean House Hotel (I cut out the actual wading through the sewers because it’s not THAT interesting), and experienced its first two jump scares – the light exploding by the front doors, and the little forklift loader thing running itself into the shipping container office where you find the keys for the front door. She’s weathered both well – Wonderland, not so much. XD Hatter, Hare, and Dormy were pretty freaked out by that last one. Fortunately they’ll do a bit better inside the house itself.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and watch the OXBox/OXtra lists in my Watch Later: Check! Exactly what I wanted to get watched today, hooray –
A) Started out with some James Turner and the third episode of “Every Lot Challenge” (where James has every residential lot challenge plus all three “attract something here” lot traits on a haunted house lot in StrangerVille). James has set an “end game” for this challenge – every time he gets promoted in his job from here on out, he gets to remove one lot challenge (randomly selected with a number generator). This seems reasonable – especially since having all these lot challenges on is going to make it a task and a half to get promoted. XD Semaj is doing his best amid all the chaos, though! And he did make a bit of progress today – after James traded his TV for a chess table (and got rid of his stove so he would have to live off of salads, getting him a garden plot to grow lettuce in for same), he managed to get the requisite number of Logic points he needed to get one promotion! The random number generator decreed that challenge 5 would be removed – “Grody,” the one that gives Sims a chance to become nauseous after eating or using the bathroom. AKA, besides “Gremlins” (which doesn’t fire anymore because of how many people are always on his lot), the one lot challenge that wasn’t really affecting Semaj’s life. The RNG is a cruel mistress.
As for what else – well, Semaj is either constantly being attacked by plasma bats, spiders, or bees, or running around terrified because of cursed objects. His attempt to hire a maid to clean his house for a day resulted in her being distracted by a lava bomb fire (understandable) and the sultry dancing of the firefighters after they put out the fire (also understandable, the hell?), then fixating on the puddles from the broken bathroom appliances so nothing much was done for a $160 payout. His wind turbines keep breaking, which is bad for power production but good for handiness skill. He keeps swapping out aspirations in a desperate attempt to get the points needed to get the “Brave” personality trait so he’s not scared all the time. He’s constantly either having no fun, no social, or no energy (though he did manage to fully upgrade his bed, at least). He can’t even find any peace to read books at the library. And James keeps making him go to work on holidays because I think he forgets about the concept of having holidays off. XD It’s – it’s rough. And hilarious to watch. XD
B) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin and Fireworks Mania! As you might imagine, it’s a game about setting off fireworks – though it doesn’t look like you do official shows. Rather, you just sandbox in one of three areas (a town, a ranch, or a blank slab) and set off however many fireworks in whatever combination you want. You are a random fireworks enthusiast!
Or, in Kevin’s case, you’re a random fireworks crimes enthusiast, because he dedicated this episode to blowing up all the things. Filling up the gas station in town with propane and setting it off with a firework? Yup. Filling a church with firework boxes and setting that off, then sticking a stop sign in the ruins? Yup. Stuffing a house full of flamingos and propane before setting it off and sending flamingos flying everywhere? Yuuup. Setting up a chain reaction on the ranch to try and explode it all at once? Yuuuuuup (though he didn’t quite succeed, there were a few preliminary fires as a few fireworks went off prematurely). Attempting to crash the game by blowing up the whole town in one massive propane-and-firework-cake-fueled go? HELL YES (and the game DIDN’T CRASH! Went down to one FPS, but still worked. I am freaking impressed, as was Kevin). So yeah, if you want to explode all the things without consequences, this is the game for you! Just, uh, maybe bring earplugs. XD
C) Then, after a break, we had this week’s Fun With Shorts – the second half of “Life In A Medieval Town!” Otto the serf visited the shoe shop where his new buddy Hans works, saw a bit about how shoes were made, picked up the nobleman’s new shoes, then headed home, all without remarking once on how Hans didn’t get any breakfast and was threatened with a beating. XD Yeah, Josh made sure to note how they basically skimmed over a bunch of the less-great aspects of living in a medieval town. . . Also, fave riff from the end: “The beast that would evolve into capitalism had emerged from hell.” XD I think we can all relate to that at this point. :p
D) Then it was over to the Watch Later to hit up OXtra and OXBox for their latest lists:
I. OXtra, “7 Hilariously Simple Ways You Skipped a Whole Level: Commenter Edition” – they’ve already discussed the ability to skip whole levels once, now it’s time for the commenters to weigh in! Like brute-forcing a lock you’re supposed to get help with solving by resolving a gang war in Dishonored 2 – or, using a cheat sheet on the wiki to figure out the riddle that will help you open the lock. (Or, if you’re like Ellen, just solving it yourself and being smug about it.) Or leaping a large gap in the first level of Human Fall Over just right to skip to the end of the mansion you’re supposed to platform through! Or sliding through a tiny tunnel in the horror movie mansion level of A Hat In Time to reach the final chest early! Or, getting the final boss of Two Worlds to follow you into town at the very start of the game and laugh in glee as the assembled villagers gang up on him and kill him – skipping not just the first level, but pretty much THE ENTIRE GAME. Now THAT’S a skip. XD
II. OXBox, “7 Real-World Prizes You Could Win in Games (But Probably Wouldn't)” – a bunch of real-life items that you could win for being super-good at video games! Or, well, items you could theoretically win, as most of these prizes were either part of canceled contests (e.g., the Swordquest series that would have led to a one player getting a silver and gold gem-encrusted sword, stopped in its tracks by the infamous Crash of 1983 – though two players DID receive two of the lesser prizes, one of which still exists today in the winner’s collection) or didn’t actually amount to anything (the winner of Curiosity by Peter Molyneux tapped his way to the center of a virtual cube to discover he’d won 1% of the profits of the studio’s NEXT game, Godus – only for that to never see a proper release and the poor guy to get NOTHING). The best bet for gamers looking for real-world prizes? Get really, really good at the Aim For Cash arcade light gun game, which was guaranteed to spit out 40 pounds sterling per game to people who actually knew how to play it. As Mike pointed out, this was the only game where an arcade owner could LOSE money from people repeatedly playing it. Why can’t we have more games like that? :p
E) And finally we had more GrayStillPlays and Happy Wheels! Today was a day of challenges that claimed to be impossible but. . .like a ramp jump that he won in two pieces because he was still technically alive and connected via his small intestines. Or a yeet across a gap of pain with the mother and two children that he won despite being completely gibbed. Or the “avoid the spinning blades at head height” challenge that he won via going through it so fast nothing got a chance to stab him. Or the jet fall that he won by falling down the side because the creator forgot to put jets there. XD Though there were a few that required skill – like “Occupy The World,” a variation on the pogo-fight where Pogo Man had to defeat various countries armed with blades, without falling into the water between them because insta-death. THAT one took Gray a while just to figure out how best to land on each country. And of course we had both a level as a goofy Godzilla smashing apart buildings, and a level running from a somewhat-higher-production-values Godzilla and his smashy limbs. Just your average day for Gray in this game!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – again, since Victor Luvs Alice is set, just had Valice Multiverse, and I only had one ask reply there – I threw in some reblogs of some VTMB fanart and FO4 gifs to jazz it up a bit. And, over on Valice Multiverse, there were a few fun things on my dash (like posts complaining how hard writing is) that I threw into the drafts, so that’s nice. :)
I'm quite happy with that last one, actually -- gives me a few more options for when I'm having trouble coming up with my own content. A healthy drafts section is a happy drafts section! :p
Okay, and as it's about time for Friday Night Writing Thing (Now With Vampires), I'd best wrap up here. To-do list for tomorrow:
1. Write some more on “Learn To Love Again"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and watch the Plumbella video in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and start the Wheatley/Chell/Geeker Week
4. Get in a workout
Gonna keep it to that because, well, how much of it I can get done depends on the weather. At least if I have to skip Sims I have a great buffer in place. . .but hoping I don't have to, because I'd like to finish up Newcrest and start concentrating on new saves. Want to play my challenges, darn it. :p Well, after I finish writing both up. . .
And now I need to answer my comment and head off to the writing thing. Night all!
