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Threatening Rain Friday
Aug. 20th, 2021 11:42 pmApparently it did actually rain a little this morning here at the house, but other than that, it kept looking like it might storm and then never following up. I suppose this could be just what one expects when a damn hurricane is coming our way on Sunday -- sort of precursors to the nonsense -- but it was very annoying nonetheless. Current forecasts put Henri as going more west of us, but it sounds like we're gonna have a shitty day on Sunday regardless.
Anyway -- short Friday, here is the updated form:
Work – Extremely quiet day – I did the GL, did some duplicates, did a few obits, and said goodbye to my coworkers as they left (a couple early for various reasons). *shrug* I’ll take it, especially for a Friday.
To-Do List –
1. Play more “Bloodlines” and get more of the Downtown quests done: Check! Crystal met with Pisha and sent Simon to her – sorry, Milligan, but Crystal is much more interested in cool occult artifacts than your life. She also investigated the rest of the Skyelines Apartments, finding the message to Muddy and Milton (so NOW I can go find the guy’s body), Paul the dead ghoul, and Hannah his girlfriend, who gave Crystal the lead on who has been infecting the local prostitutes, at least – Jezebel Locke. From there she stopped by Fat Larry, to sell and buy a few items and pick up his quest – though I actually had to do a save-and-reload and up Crystal’s Charisma a bit by picking up some XP to make sure I could get the “discount” (a free dot in the Finance skill) along with the money. Reported to Pisha to learn about the artifacts she wanted, then headed down into the parking garage to get the briefcase. Managed, with the help of the vents, a few careful reloads, and a stealth kill when “Command” (from Dominate) failed me, to get it undetected and get the bit of extra experience from doing so (seriously, “Command” is nowhere near as helpful as “Hysteria,” the first level of the Dementation ability – people seem to snap out of “Command” quicker!). Then I dropped it off with Larry and got Crystal’s first outfit change to get her a little extra armor. Left her hanging out by Confessions to pick up Venus’s quests, then I’ll tackle the Empire Arms in one go. :)
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check – did this after playing my game, in fact! Poor Alice has taken her tumble through the stairs, and has found herself in a basement that resembles the Deluded Depths more than she was expecting. ...Look, it’s called the Ocean house, and she was just talking to Carpenter – I had to. XD Anyway, she’s seen the woman ghost – I’m calling her Dorothy – running down the corridor, so it’s time to chase her and find a way to get back upstairs. Without being taken out by a trap clam or Cannon Crab. :p
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and watch a couple of OXBox/OXtra videos: Check to the max – I managed to watch ALL of the OX content I had in the Watch Later, meaning I currently have a single Plumbella video in there for tomorrow. Nice~
A) Started with the OXBox and OXtra -
I. OXtra, “7 Bizarre Pokemon Spin-Offs We’ll Have to Convince You Are Real” – the weirdest spin-off Pokemon games, because when you make this much money, you can afford to be strange from time to time. Highlights included Pokemon Channel, a game about watching Professor Oak’s weird TV network with things like a Squirtle running a QVC channel and Psyduck doing the news with Meowth; the three Pokemon mini-games on CD that were included in Perdue chicken nuggets as part of the franchise’s 10th anniversary celebrations; Pokemon Smile, a tooth-brushing game app designed to encourage kids to brush their teeth properly (which Luke played for our edification), and Pokemon Rumble, a game where you sent toy versions of Pokemon on adventures to defeat other toys and participate in a battle royale, aka “fine, it’s a fighting game, HAPPY?” XD Weird shit, but amusing.
II. OXBox, “7 Spin-off Games That Were Better Than the Original” – more spin-off fun, with spin-off games arguably more fun than their parent series. I was confused to see The Sims on the thumbnail, trying to recall which one of the spin-off to that series the team considered superior – turns out I’d completely forgotten The Sims is ITSELF a spin-off of Sim City. Yeah, totally forgot that game came first. . . Other entries included Judgment for the Yakuza series (not saying the one where you play as a detective is better than ALL the other games, but it outpaces the weaker ones), the Persona series for the Shin Megami Tensei series in Japan (yes, Persona is a spin-off of something else – the other games apparently haven’t made it over here), and Unreal Tournament for Unreal (yes, Unreal was a game before it was a game engine – a Doom clone that only really got fun once it became an arena shooter you could play with friends). Gotta love when the spin-off does it better, right? I’m sure the companies do. . .
III. “Lego Super Mario: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO BOWSER JR? Let's Build Mario Lego Starter Set!” – Andy and Luke play with Super Mario LEGOs! :D This is a special set where you can build a course for a Mario fig with an electronic face and scanners in his feet so he can react appropriately to, for instance, getting an item block, or stomping on a Goomba. He’ll even go to sleep if you lay him down on his back while he’s on. (While he’s OFF, he looks like some hellish creepypasta Mario, as Luke was keen to point out.) Andy promptly disdained any and all instructions and related apps and built his own simple homemade course, while Luke struggled to construct Bowser Jr. (aka “Bowsy” in French) without any guide. He eventually made something semi-recognizable, and they ran Mario through the course. A couple of times, because the first time Andy got too into Goomba murder and didn’t realize that, when you put Mario in the starter pipe piece, a timer starts. They did eventually win the day, though, and Mario took Bowsy’s bib as a reward. XD Beautiful silly fun from the pair, I love it. :D
IV. “Hitman 3 SLOTH ESCALATION: Don't Move! | Hitman 3 Seven Deadly Sins DLC” – time for the gang to play the Sloth Escalation of Hitman 3, yay! And Mike was on the controller, double yay. XD First level went really easy – Mike got the shuriken to take out the first target, then used the sniper rifle provided by the snail to snipe off the second and set the third on fire via the flaming barrel. Second level – well, there was a lot of wasted vitality in trying to figure out how to GET to each target, and how to off them (particularly the accident victims), and Mike ended up dying to the snail’s health drain on the first run despite getting the jogger to reset his vitality at one point. He did better the second time and managed to get another sniper to take out the final target and get back to his shell. Third level – again, had to redo after they discovered that just going out a window and standing on a ledge REALLY drains your vitality. Mike did well in dropping chandeliers on people, though, and he ALMOST took out the jogger by dropping one of his targets on her, which would have been epic. Also we got to see what 47 actually looks like when he’s hiding in a wardrobe, by virtue of him hiding in front of a mirror. XD It’s very disturbing. But Mike managed to finish all three levels, at 4 stars, 2 stars, and 1 star respectively. It could have been worse, Mike! And often is with you. XD
B) Then it was time to pop over to Fun With Shorts and watch his latest – “Madeline!” No, not the good one, this was a “Jolly Frolic” by another company with much simpler animation and worse music. Got the story right, at least, from what I remember of watching the other adaptation. Definitely one of the better shorts Josh has riffed, though he had some good ones here – namely making some Peanuts jokes based on one of the animators here later working on those specials, and a biting comment on Robert Zemeckis and his creepy motion-capture-animated movies. :p
C) Then we went over to Call Me Kevin, and more Bitlife! With a royal twist, this time – turns out you can play the life of a royal family member in this game! Kevin created Dick Tator, the most Irish prince of Spain, to grow up in the lap of luxury – and then, once he was old enough, start looking for hitmen to kill his parents so he could be King. It took a few tries, one murder conviction that was later overturned, and one murder trial that ended in a “not guilty” verdict, but Dick managed eventually to get both of them killed and become King! He celebrated with a luxury yacht and a parrot, had a fling with a random woman, then killed a bunch of hippies by dipping them in an acid bath (admittedly by accident; Kevin didn’t realize clicking the button kept killing hippies – he was trying to get it to close) and his 93-year-old Queen Consort with diseased rats, denouncing his critics all the while. ...The people eventually overthrew him and exiled him to Columbia, where he ended up doing nude photo shoots and YouTube ads for diapers before dying at 33 trapped on his sinking yacht (which he was allowed to keep for some reason). Kevin turned back the clock ten years, to have Dick repeatedly fail at finding a hitman to kill his mother, avoiding prison all the while – at least until he finally managed to poison her himself. And then he kept escaping prison to put through new laws to stop his citizens having fun on mobile games and the like, until he died from botched gender reassignment surgery to go undercover. At least he made it to 47 that time! XD
D) And naturally we ended on GrayStillPlays, and more Happy Wheels! Highlights of this episode included another “we know Gray very well by now” bottle flip, with the MLG section covered by rapidly-spinning balls (Gray STILL got a bottle onto it); a prison break with pogo guy where he died immediately after escaping with Santa thanks to the battle ax embedded in his chest (still won, though!); a cheaty jet wall that exploded like ten million jets as soon as Gray touched the first – but SOMEHOW failed to kill him, so he managed to roll onto the win before he exploded; a trip to space that involved first a descent to earth via many layers of glass-tipping, homing-bomb-avoiding pain to get home to his wife and watermelons, then an actual ascent into the heavens to collect the shooting star coins while having his arms ripped off by meteors; and a glass break run through hell with the world’s most adorable Satan at the end. You know, his usual. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – glad I was already all set on Valice Multiverse, because I had four thread replies, and all of them were at least a couple of paragraphs! Plus one ask, but that was easy and OOC. At least they’re all in the queue and good to go for tomorrow!
5. Get in a workout: Check – decided to do another walk on the treadmill to get through Episode 15 of Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough, as it was 38 minutes and I could just about cover that with my standard walk. As promised by the last episode, it was mainly about Miss Jon going out to discover what happened to the “Lost Patrol,” the recon team that went missing three years ago. Along the way, she stumbled across a vertibird taking on some raiders at Glitch Quarry (and a nice new laser pistol and a combat rifle); Medford Medical, where she barely escaped the notice of a Super Mutant Suicider, thanks to Dogmeat tanking the hit; Med-Tek, where she picked off some feral ghouls; and a load of Legendary enemies with terrible gear (including two BOARDS right in a row – seems Jon’s bad luck with Legendary drops has been there from the beginning! Though she did pick up a bit of Chameleon gear. . .only to have to take it off when it started really messing up the Pip-Boy UI). She did get herself better lock-picking and a sweet new suit of power armor, though!
Anyway, yes, the episode mainly followed the trail of the doomed patrol, as one by one most of the characters were picked off by terrible chance (unknown assailants shortly after drop-off – probably raiders; feral ghouls at the National Guard Training Yard; Super Mutants at the Revere Satellite Array), leading finally to Paladin Brandis himself holed up in his bunker. Miss Jon had a bit of a time getting to him (the Super Mutants in the Array gave her some trouble, though luckily a vertibird showed up and dropped off some Brotherhood to help – and then exploded), but she did in the end, and was able to stop him opening fire and give him his team’s reclaimed holotags. Didn’t successfully get him to rejoin the Brotherhood, though, possibly mostly because she didn’t get out of her new power armor to put on her tux. And she wasn’t able to hand in the mission either, because Danse was already onto the mission “Shadow of Steel,” where you go up to the Prydwen to meet Elder Maxson himself. XD So yeah, Miss Jon’s taking a ride up to the airship next episode, and THEN hopefully she can turn in the location of Brandis!
*whew* Busy night! And I'm still not entirely done. . . And I've got plenty to do tomorrow, so let's set up that to-do list:
1. Clean my room
2. Watch the Plumbella video in my Watch Later and keep up on YouTube Subs
3. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again"
4. Play Sims 4 and complete another day of the McTest/Redatcted/Notamoron family
Seems legit -- plus I have to make sure my laptop and my iPad are both charged up for Sunday. Hopefully this peters out a bit and we don't get hit too hard. . .fingers crossed, everybody. In the meantime, I've got comments to answer and tags to finish catching up on -- night all!
Anyway -- short Friday, here is the updated form:
Work – Extremely quiet day – I did the GL, did some duplicates, did a few obits, and said goodbye to my coworkers as they left (a couple early for various reasons). *shrug* I’ll take it, especially for a Friday.
To-Do List –
1. Play more “Bloodlines” and get more of the Downtown quests done: Check! Crystal met with Pisha and sent Simon to her – sorry, Milligan, but Crystal is much more interested in cool occult artifacts than your life. She also investigated the rest of the Skyelines Apartments, finding the message to Muddy and Milton (so NOW I can go find the guy’s body), Paul the dead ghoul, and Hannah his girlfriend, who gave Crystal the lead on who has been infecting the local prostitutes, at least – Jezebel Locke. From there she stopped by Fat Larry, to sell and buy a few items and pick up his quest – though I actually had to do a save-and-reload and up Crystal’s Charisma a bit by picking up some XP to make sure I could get the “discount” (a free dot in the Finance skill) along with the money. Reported to Pisha to learn about the artifacts she wanted, then headed down into the parking garage to get the briefcase. Managed, with the help of the vents, a few careful reloads, and a stealth kill when “Command” (from Dominate) failed me, to get it undetected and get the bit of extra experience from doing so (seriously, “Command” is nowhere near as helpful as “Hysteria,” the first level of the Dementation ability – people seem to snap out of “Command” quicker!). Then I dropped it off with Larry and got Crystal’s first outfit change to get her a little extra armor. Left her hanging out by Confessions to pick up Venus’s quests, then I’ll tackle the Empire Arms in one go. :)
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check – did this after playing my game, in fact! Poor Alice has taken her tumble through the stairs, and has found herself in a basement that resembles the Deluded Depths more than she was expecting. ...Look, it’s called the Ocean house, and she was just talking to Carpenter – I had to. XD Anyway, she’s seen the woman ghost – I’m calling her Dorothy – running down the corridor, so it’s time to chase her and find a way to get back upstairs. Without being taken out by a trap clam or Cannon Crab. :p
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions and watch a couple of OXBox/OXtra videos: Check to the max – I managed to watch ALL of the OX content I had in the Watch Later, meaning I currently have a single Plumbella video in there for tomorrow. Nice~
A) Started with the OXBox and OXtra -
I. OXtra, “7 Bizarre Pokemon Spin-Offs We’ll Have to Convince You Are Real” – the weirdest spin-off Pokemon games, because when you make this much money, you can afford to be strange from time to time. Highlights included Pokemon Channel, a game about watching Professor Oak’s weird TV network with things like a Squirtle running a QVC channel and Psyduck doing the news with Meowth; the three Pokemon mini-games on CD that were included in Perdue chicken nuggets as part of the franchise’s 10th anniversary celebrations; Pokemon Smile, a tooth-brushing game app designed to encourage kids to brush their teeth properly (which Luke played for our edification), and Pokemon Rumble, a game where you sent toy versions of Pokemon on adventures to defeat other toys and participate in a battle royale, aka “fine, it’s a fighting game, HAPPY?” XD Weird shit, but amusing.
II. OXBox, “7 Spin-off Games That Were Better Than the Original” – more spin-off fun, with spin-off games arguably more fun than their parent series. I was confused to see The Sims on the thumbnail, trying to recall which one of the spin-off to that series the team considered superior – turns out I’d completely forgotten The Sims is ITSELF a spin-off of Sim City. Yeah, totally forgot that game came first. . . Other entries included Judgment for the Yakuza series (not saying the one where you play as a detective is better than ALL the other games, but it outpaces the weaker ones), the Persona series for the Shin Megami Tensei series in Japan (yes, Persona is a spin-off of something else – the other games apparently haven’t made it over here), and Unreal Tournament for Unreal (yes, Unreal was a game before it was a game engine – a Doom clone that only really got fun once it became an arena shooter you could play with friends). Gotta love when the spin-off does it better, right? I’m sure the companies do. . .
III. “Lego Super Mario: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO BOWSER JR? Let's Build Mario Lego Starter Set!” – Andy and Luke play with Super Mario LEGOs! :D This is a special set where you can build a course for a Mario fig with an electronic face and scanners in his feet so he can react appropriately to, for instance, getting an item block, or stomping on a Goomba. He’ll even go to sleep if you lay him down on his back while he’s on. (While he’s OFF, he looks like some hellish creepypasta Mario, as Luke was keen to point out.) Andy promptly disdained any and all instructions and related apps and built his own simple homemade course, while Luke struggled to construct Bowser Jr. (aka “Bowsy” in French) without any guide. He eventually made something semi-recognizable, and they ran Mario through the course. A couple of times, because the first time Andy got too into Goomba murder and didn’t realize that, when you put Mario in the starter pipe piece, a timer starts. They did eventually win the day, though, and Mario took Bowsy’s bib as a reward. XD Beautiful silly fun from the pair, I love it. :D
IV. “Hitman 3 SLOTH ESCALATION: Don't Move! | Hitman 3 Seven Deadly Sins DLC” – time for the gang to play the Sloth Escalation of Hitman 3, yay! And Mike was on the controller, double yay. XD First level went really easy – Mike got the shuriken to take out the first target, then used the sniper rifle provided by the snail to snipe off the second and set the third on fire via the flaming barrel. Second level – well, there was a lot of wasted vitality in trying to figure out how to GET to each target, and how to off them (particularly the accident victims), and Mike ended up dying to the snail’s health drain on the first run despite getting the jogger to reset his vitality at one point. He did better the second time and managed to get another sniper to take out the final target and get back to his shell. Third level – again, had to redo after they discovered that just going out a window and standing on a ledge REALLY drains your vitality. Mike did well in dropping chandeliers on people, though, and he ALMOST took out the jogger by dropping one of his targets on her, which would have been epic. Also we got to see what 47 actually looks like when he’s hiding in a wardrobe, by virtue of him hiding in front of a mirror. XD It’s very disturbing. But Mike managed to finish all three levels, at 4 stars, 2 stars, and 1 star respectively. It could have been worse, Mike! And often is with you. XD
B) Then it was time to pop over to Fun With Shorts and watch his latest – “Madeline!” No, not the good one, this was a “Jolly Frolic” by another company with much simpler animation and worse music. Got the story right, at least, from what I remember of watching the other adaptation. Definitely one of the better shorts Josh has riffed, though he had some good ones here – namely making some Peanuts jokes based on one of the animators here later working on those specials, and a biting comment on Robert Zemeckis and his creepy motion-capture-animated movies. :p
C) Then we went over to Call Me Kevin, and more Bitlife! With a royal twist, this time – turns out you can play the life of a royal family member in this game! Kevin created Dick Tator, the most Irish prince of Spain, to grow up in the lap of luxury – and then, once he was old enough, start looking for hitmen to kill his parents so he could be King. It took a few tries, one murder conviction that was later overturned, and one murder trial that ended in a “not guilty” verdict, but Dick managed eventually to get both of them killed and become King! He celebrated with a luxury yacht and a parrot, had a fling with a random woman, then killed a bunch of hippies by dipping them in an acid bath (admittedly by accident; Kevin didn’t realize clicking the button kept killing hippies – he was trying to get it to close) and his 93-year-old Queen Consort with diseased rats, denouncing his critics all the while. ...The people eventually overthrew him and exiled him to Columbia, where he ended up doing nude photo shoots and YouTube ads for diapers before dying at 33 trapped on his sinking yacht (which he was allowed to keep for some reason). Kevin turned back the clock ten years, to have Dick repeatedly fail at finding a hitman to kill his mother, avoiding prison all the while – at least until he finally managed to poison her himself. And then he kept escaping prison to put through new laws to stop his citizens having fun on mobile games and the like, until he died from botched gender reassignment surgery to go undercover. At least he made it to 47 that time! XD
D) And naturally we ended on GrayStillPlays, and more Happy Wheels! Highlights of this episode included another “we know Gray very well by now” bottle flip, with the MLG section covered by rapidly-spinning balls (Gray STILL got a bottle onto it); a prison break with pogo guy where he died immediately after escaping with Santa thanks to the battle ax embedded in his chest (still won, though!); a cheaty jet wall that exploded like ten million jets as soon as Gray touched the first – but SOMEHOW failed to kill him, so he managed to roll onto the win before he exploded; a trip to space that involved first a descent to earth via many layers of glass-tipping, homing-bomb-avoiding pain to get home to his wife and watermelons, then an actual ascent into the heavens to collect the shooting star coins while having his arms ripped off by meteors; and a glass break run through hell with the world’s most adorable Satan at the end. You know, his usual. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – glad I was already all set on Valice Multiverse, because I had four thread replies, and all of them were at least a couple of paragraphs! Plus one ask, but that was easy and OOC. At least they’re all in the queue and good to go for tomorrow!
5. Get in a workout: Check – decided to do another walk on the treadmill to get through Episode 15 of Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough, as it was 38 minutes and I could just about cover that with my standard walk. As promised by the last episode, it was mainly about Miss Jon going out to discover what happened to the “Lost Patrol,” the recon team that went missing three years ago. Along the way, she stumbled across a vertibird taking on some raiders at Glitch Quarry (and a nice new laser pistol and a combat rifle); Medford Medical, where she barely escaped the notice of a Super Mutant Suicider, thanks to Dogmeat tanking the hit; Med-Tek, where she picked off some feral ghouls; and a load of Legendary enemies with terrible gear (including two BOARDS right in a row – seems Jon’s bad luck with Legendary drops has been there from the beginning! Though she did pick up a bit of Chameleon gear. . .only to have to take it off when it started really messing up the Pip-Boy UI). She did get herself better lock-picking and a sweet new suit of power armor, though!
Anyway, yes, the episode mainly followed the trail of the doomed patrol, as one by one most of the characters were picked off by terrible chance (unknown assailants shortly after drop-off – probably raiders; feral ghouls at the National Guard Training Yard; Super Mutants at the Revere Satellite Array), leading finally to Paladin Brandis himself holed up in his bunker. Miss Jon had a bit of a time getting to him (the Super Mutants in the Array gave her some trouble, though luckily a vertibird showed up and dropped off some Brotherhood to help – and then exploded), but she did in the end, and was able to stop him opening fire and give him his team’s reclaimed holotags. Didn’t successfully get him to rejoin the Brotherhood, though, possibly mostly because she didn’t get out of her new power armor to put on her tux. And she wasn’t able to hand in the mission either, because Danse was already onto the mission “Shadow of Steel,” where you go up to the Prydwen to meet Elder Maxson himself. XD So yeah, Miss Jon’s taking a ride up to the airship next episode, and THEN hopefully she can turn in the location of Brandis!
*whew* Busy night! And I'm still not entirely done. . . And I've got plenty to do tomorrow, so let's set up that to-do list:
1. Clean my room
2. Watch the Plumbella video in my Watch Later and keep up on YouTube Subs
3. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again"
4. Play Sims 4 and complete another day of the McTest/Redatcted/Notamoron family
Seems legit -- plus I have to make sure my laptop and my iPad are both charged up for Sunday. Hopefully this peters out a bit and we don't get hit too hard. . .fingers crossed, everybody. In the meantime, I've got comments to answer and tags to finish catching up on -- night all!
