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Look At Me, Making An Effort
Oct. 25th, 2021 10:04 pmYes, today is a BTTF Day indeed, so I have actually managed to snag the 10:04 posting date! I mean, it's going to take me a lot longer than that to actually POST this, but at least I got the timestamp legitimately. :p One of these days I'll get better at getting that consistently for BTTF days again. . .
Okay, now that it's been an hour and I've ACTUALLY pretty much finished my stuff for the day, let's take a look at the old to-dos:
Work – Meh Monday – nothing too difficult, just stuff I was trying to get done taking longer than expected, or surprise interruptions I didn’t want. I’ve had worse, I’ve had better.
Beanbags – Not today – started out raining, remained gloomy and misty straight through the afternoon – and apparently we’re getting a bit of a nor’easter tomorrow, yaaaay. *sigh* Better make sure my iPad is charged. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back to L.A. By Night, “Instruments of Darkness!” Things are not going particularly well for our protagonists – after securing a private room at The Highland, Victor, Nelli, Jasper, and Annabelle basically had to endure being smarmed at by Chaz, who was inviting all of them (though mostly rich, important Victor Temple) to join back up with the Camarilla. None of them were particularly impressed – Victor gave Annabelle a quick and dirty history lesson about the sect that showed his contempt for it, though he did agree to talk to incoming Prince Vannevar Thomas (yes, really) in exchange for some more help in figuring out what the hell happened at the observatory last night; Nelli was very quiet because she and her sire have a shit relationship and of course she doesn’t want her diablerie secret getting out; Annabelle was polite enough but very clearly refused to get involved with anything involving “gilded leashes,” and Jasper –
Well, Jasper had gone hungry for too long and ended up with a Bestial Failure on a roll, forcing him to spend willpower to avoid just going ham on the club patrons. Annabelle just barely got him out of the club in time via a back way through the kitchen as he struggled to reign in his beast, and ended up following him by sound as he fled into the sewers. And while THAT was going on, two guys showed up looking for Victor, and he found himself running from them because they’d been Dominated into trying a hit on him, and he couldn’t get them to back down. Leaving Nelli and Chaz alone in the room, which – yeah, imagine that’s gonna be delightful for her. We’ll finish off this episode tomorrow!
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check – Alice has had a rather unproductive (and creepy) conversation with Vandal in the blood bank about getting into the morgue and whether or not he’s seen Lily. So with the help of her Obfuscate and a lockpick, she’s instead broken into the blood bank to find her way around. So far she’s found a waiting room and an office, though nothing indicating where she actually wants to go. Perhaps the office computer can help her?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check – two in, two out, plus one out of the Watch Later (now that I’ve added the other episode of AT4W looking at The Ring manga to it) –
A) No James Turner today, so I went ahead and watched another video that caught my eye: “Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2: A Retrospective On Failure.” Basically it’s just a summary by YouTuber Forgotten Enclave on the history of VTMB2 and how it went from something everyone was excited about to being in such limbo some people – including Forgotten himself – believe it’s been unofficially canceled. He personally apparently never had high hopes for it simply because he didn’t think the game as-shown really fit the aesthetic of the World of Darkness (specifically, he was confused by the emphasis on vampire parkour, which he cites as a reason he’s not interested in the “battle royale”-themed Blood Hunt), and apparently HardSuit Labs doesn’t have much experience doing actual DEVELOPMENT of games? They’re more of an optimization company?? *shrug* It was a pretty thorough look at how the hype over the game crashed and burned, and once again made me happy that I never pre-order games. I’ll wait until I’m SURE there’s going to be a product I like, thanks.
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and more of Minecraft “One Chunk Challenge!” Yaaay :D Kevin set himself a goal today, and that goal was simple and yet so very hard – make a bed! Simple because, well, it’s a bed. Hard because beds require wool, and as we all know, Kevin is in VIEW of sheep, but. . .fortunately, the game does accept a rather interesting substitute – spider string! So Kevin’s life became making dark places underground and hoping for spider spawns. This had – interesting results. Namely, his little “pick a door, any door” dungeon got COMPLETELY overrun with zombies, creepers, bats, and even at one point a zombified villager and a witch! The former which despawned after Kevin tried trapping him by the pig farm (which is now HILARIOUSLY overcrowded); the latter ended up being blown up by a creeper. Kevin was annoyed. Fortunately, despite being almost literally overrun with enemies, Kevin actually did pretty well – culling the pig farm for tons of pork chops; attracting another traveling trader and – after the guy was apparently accidentally killed by his own llamas – stealing said llamas with the leads he got off the other trader’s llamas; and – through sheer luck – attracting enough spiders into his little dark holes to pick up enough string to make wool blocks, and from there to make A BED. *applause* Kevin was so happy, y’all. Happy enough that he’s decided to reward himself – with ONE EXTRA CHUNK! So next time we see him, this may in fact be a TWO-chunk challenge! Imagine the space. . .
C) And from there we headed over to GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with a very Floridian bottle flip (hot pink background, flamingo, margarita maker, the works), and moved onto such boards as “the revenge of Spleens and Reginald” (aka how many times can Gray survive having watermelons flung at him at high speed); a “need for speed” board (Gray needed all the brakes to survive – that and flinging his son to go ahead of him and clear out some of the obstacles); a glass break with surprise crossbows at the end (again, Tom Hardy proved to be invaluable to Gray’s survival); a “fight for the city” board (where Gray had to pogo off a collapsing building and defeat the villain and his henchmen – no problem, Gray has bounced his way to victory many times before); a story about the death of a homeless man with a good ending (bully who killed him goes to jail) and bad ending (bully who killed him becomes rich and famous); and a lethal ride to school (on which Gray technically died but won anyway). But trust me – all quivered before THE FREEZE WALL BOARD. I mean, first off, Gray STARTED with a long and complicated fall past some cannons to get the secret coin win at the very beginning of the board. But then he started PLAYING said actual board and – oh man. What it is, is a series of “freeze walls” – columns of blocks where you knock over the blocks, and they freeze in position after a certain amount of time. But that time just kept getting shorter and shorter, until it could be counted in practically MILLISECONDS. The last ones actually had to have boosts put in front of them so you could have a chance at winning – and even THEN, Gray died SO MANY TIMES to bad block position. He actually finally won with a character who’d lost BOTH LEGS AND ONE ARM and just determinedly CRAWLED his way past the final blocks to the finish line. It took him ALMOST NINE FREAKING MINUTES TOTAL. The poor man’s sobs as he realized he couldn’t save the win in-game. . . Oh Gray. *pats him* We really do appreciate all the torture you put yourself through for us, man.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – since everything for this week is pretty much kosher, I added some “rough drafts” for future posts. Namely, a quick thing about Victor having the “Blood Empathy” merit from V5 as a ghoul (which allows him to sense Alice and her emotional state; I have decided this is from his surprise trip to the Underworld leaving him supernaturally sensitive, especially to dead creatures), and a rather longer thing about the “Fallout of Darkness” timeline (apparently I have more ideas about what happens when than I thought – looks like the first act, with the killing of Kellogg and the arrival of the BOS, happens before the end of 2287!). Might as well stay ahead of the curve!
Nice, nice. . .work may have been a little stressful, but I can't deny my pleasure at getting some of this other stuff sorted. Feels good to be a little ahead. Especially with updating this thing. :P And now I have to answer my comment on here and work on getting to bed at a somewhat more decent hour. Night all!
Okay, now that it's been an hour and I've ACTUALLY pretty much finished my stuff for the day, let's take a look at the old to-dos:
Work – Meh Monday – nothing too difficult, just stuff I was trying to get done taking longer than expected, or surprise interruptions I didn’t want. I’ve had worse, I’ve had better.
Beanbags – Not today – started out raining, remained gloomy and misty straight through the afternoon – and apparently we’re getting a bit of a nor’easter tomorrow, yaaaay. *sigh* Better make sure my iPad is charged. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back to L.A. By Night, “Instruments of Darkness!” Things are not going particularly well for our protagonists – after securing a private room at The Highland, Victor, Nelli, Jasper, and Annabelle basically had to endure being smarmed at by Chaz, who was inviting all of them (though mostly rich, important Victor Temple) to join back up with the Camarilla. None of them were particularly impressed – Victor gave Annabelle a quick and dirty history lesson about the sect that showed his contempt for it, though he did agree to talk to incoming Prince Vannevar Thomas (yes, really) in exchange for some more help in figuring out what the hell happened at the observatory last night; Nelli was very quiet because she and her sire have a shit relationship and of course she doesn’t want her diablerie secret getting out; Annabelle was polite enough but very clearly refused to get involved with anything involving “gilded leashes,” and Jasper –
Well, Jasper had gone hungry for too long and ended up with a Bestial Failure on a roll, forcing him to spend willpower to avoid just going ham on the club patrons. Annabelle just barely got him out of the club in time via a back way through the kitchen as he struggled to reign in his beast, and ended up following him by sound as he fled into the sewers. And while THAT was going on, two guys showed up looking for Victor, and he found himself running from them because they’d been Dominated into trying a hit on him, and he couldn’t get them to back down. Leaving Nelli and Chaz alone in the room, which – yeah, imagine that’s gonna be delightful for her. We’ll finish off this episode tomorrow!
2. Edit some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check – Alice has had a rather unproductive (and creepy) conversation with Vandal in the blood bank about getting into the morgue and whether or not he’s seen Lily. So with the help of her Obfuscate and a lockpick, she’s instead broken into the blood bank to find her way around. So far she’s found a waiting room and an office, though nothing indicating where she actually wants to go. Perhaps the office computer can help her?
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check – two in, two out, plus one out of the Watch Later (now that I’ve added the other episode of AT4W looking at The Ring manga to it) –
A) No James Turner today, so I went ahead and watched another video that caught my eye: “Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2: A Retrospective On Failure.” Basically it’s just a summary by YouTuber Forgotten Enclave on the history of VTMB2 and how it went from something everyone was excited about to being in such limbo some people – including Forgotten himself – believe it’s been unofficially canceled. He personally apparently never had high hopes for it simply because he didn’t think the game as-shown really fit the aesthetic of the World of Darkness (specifically, he was confused by the emphasis on vampire parkour, which he cites as a reason he’s not interested in the “battle royale”-themed Blood Hunt), and apparently HardSuit Labs doesn’t have much experience doing actual DEVELOPMENT of games? They’re more of an optimization company?? *shrug* It was a pretty thorough look at how the hype over the game crashed and burned, and once again made me happy that I never pre-order games. I’ll wait until I’m SURE there’s going to be a product I like, thanks.
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and more of Minecraft “One Chunk Challenge!” Yaaay :D Kevin set himself a goal today, and that goal was simple and yet so very hard – make a bed! Simple because, well, it’s a bed. Hard because beds require wool, and as we all know, Kevin is in VIEW of sheep, but. . .fortunately, the game does accept a rather interesting substitute – spider string! So Kevin’s life became making dark places underground and hoping for spider spawns. This had – interesting results. Namely, his little “pick a door, any door” dungeon got COMPLETELY overrun with zombies, creepers, bats, and even at one point a zombified villager and a witch! The former which despawned after Kevin tried trapping him by the pig farm (which is now HILARIOUSLY overcrowded); the latter ended up being blown up by a creeper. Kevin was annoyed. Fortunately, despite being almost literally overrun with enemies, Kevin actually did pretty well – culling the pig farm for tons of pork chops; attracting another traveling trader and – after the guy was apparently accidentally killed by his own llamas – stealing said llamas with the leads he got off the other trader’s llamas; and – through sheer luck – attracting enough spiders into his little dark holes to pick up enough string to make wool blocks, and from there to make A BED. *applause* Kevin was so happy, y’all. Happy enough that he’s decided to reward himself – with ONE EXTRA CHUNK! So next time we see him, this may in fact be a TWO-chunk challenge! Imagine the space. . .
C) And from there we headed over to GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with a very Floridian bottle flip (hot pink background, flamingo, margarita maker, the works), and moved onto such boards as “the revenge of Spleens and Reginald” (aka how many times can Gray survive having watermelons flung at him at high speed); a “need for speed” board (Gray needed all the brakes to survive – that and flinging his son to go ahead of him and clear out some of the obstacles); a glass break with surprise crossbows at the end (again, Tom Hardy proved to be invaluable to Gray’s survival); a “fight for the city” board (where Gray had to pogo off a collapsing building and defeat the villain and his henchmen – no problem, Gray has bounced his way to victory many times before); a story about the death of a homeless man with a good ending (bully who killed him goes to jail) and bad ending (bully who killed him becomes rich and famous); and a lethal ride to school (on which Gray technically died but won anyway). But trust me – all quivered before THE FREEZE WALL BOARD. I mean, first off, Gray STARTED with a long and complicated fall past some cannons to get the secret coin win at the very beginning of the board. But then he started PLAYING said actual board and – oh man. What it is, is a series of “freeze walls” – columns of blocks where you knock over the blocks, and they freeze in position after a certain amount of time. But that time just kept getting shorter and shorter, until it could be counted in practically MILLISECONDS. The last ones actually had to have boosts put in front of them so you could have a chance at winning – and even THEN, Gray died SO MANY TIMES to bad block position. He actually finally won with a character who’d lost BOTH LEGS AND ONE ARM and just determinedly CRAWLED his way past the final blocks to the finish line. It took him ALMOST NINE FREAKING MINUTES TOTAL. The poor man’s sobs as he realized he couldn’t save the win in-game. . . Oh Gray. *pats him* We really do appreciate all the torture you put yourself through for us, man.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – since everything for this week is pretty much kosher, I added some “rough drafts” for future posts. Namely, a quick thing about Victor having the “Blood Empathy” merit from V5 as a ghoul (which allows him to sense Alice and her emotional state; I have decided this is from his surprise trip to the Underworld leaving him supernaturally sensitive, especially to dead creatures), and a rather longer thing about the “Fallout of Darkness” timeline (apparently I have more ideas about what happens when than I thought – looks like the first act, with the killing of Kellogg and the arrival of the BOS, happens before the end of 2287!). Might as well stay ahead of the curve!
Nice, nice. . .work may have been a little stressful, but I can't deny my pleasure at getting some of this other stuff sorted. Feels good to be a little ahead. Especially with updating this thing. :P And now I have to answer my comment on here and work on getting to bed at a somewhat more decent hour. Night all!
