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Slightly Sad Sunday
May. 15th, 2022 11:24 pmMostly in terms of remembering I have to go back to work tomorrow. :( Meeeeh. Weather also wasn't quite as nice as the past couple of days, staying cloudy for longer and often looking like it was gonna rain. Never did, though, and it stayed pretty warm, so no real complaints here. I like this sudden turn toward niceness.
I also like that I did well on my to-do list:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did this shortly after my playthrough this afternoon, naturally. Victor and Piper had a busy day, looping back around on themselves and getting repeatedly at least slightly lost in the rubble-strewn streets of Boston as they looked for Goodneighbor or Park Street Station. They have at least found the Common, though, and – after fleeing in there from a worrying rumbling in the pond – are currently investigating the Mass Statehouse, which seems to be home to both raiders AND mirelurks at the moment. . .hey, Victor, at least you didn’t die TWICE to the Legendary Radscorpion in this universe (see below).
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout video: Check! Pretty easy tonight, as we only had Gray in the Subs anyway, but it was fun nonetheless –
A) Started with something from the Recommendeds: “Ellen vs Luke Switch Bowling: Barry Sportington Presents the Oxtra Sports Bowling Challenge!” This was footage of Luke and Ellen taking part in a little Switch Sports bowling tournament in a local shopping center (and like good little YouTubers, they were masked) – and as they didn’t have microphones with them, Producer Jon stepped up as “Barry Sportington” to provide voiceover commentary. XD Ellen ruled the early game pretty solidly, with Luke not quite getting the spin he wanted from his virtual ball – but once he perfected his technique? Oh, dude was getting strike after strike, while poor Ellen’s game faltered. He ended up with two strikes in a row on the tenth frame! :D They both did pretty well in the end, but Luke managed to win with a score of 166. Good stuff – especially with Jon’s commentary, goofing over some of the technical difficulties, remarking on the nice indoor trees, pointing out Luke dropping the ball on his virtual foot early on, and trying to figure out what to call where the pins go when you knock them over. XD I hope for more Barry Sportington for future games like these!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! This video, we had a bottle flip with a computer virus (freezes the game), the Yeetron 9000 (a robot that will smash you to pieces), and a win area that actually required you to do a surprise rope swing (to the tune of “In The Hall of the Mountain King”); a jetpack adventure where you had to pick up the coins while not getting stabbed by the spiky electricity (and given how the jetpack started going very fast very quickly, that was not easy); a “murder mystery” board where a bunch of people were killed with random weapons and Gray just flew straight to the win with Pogo Guy (I suspect he flew over the reveal of the killer); a pineapple chunks throw where death, meteors, and exploding taco bell lurked around every corner (also there was a secret win where you had to throw machetes into Tom Hardy’s head); a neon “stunt board” with two different paths to beat (avoiding the spikes and doing a bottle run straight into a battle axe); a board full of 3-D style objects (where Gray was required to shove cylinders into gaps, build bridges, and avoid the evil box of doom); a double escape box where if you avoided the spray of weapons in the first, you could get smashed by the stompy Super Mario Bros block in the second (took Gray a lot of tries to get that ninja kick against the glass wall JUST right); and finally a robot mecha fight between Hobo and Tom Hardy (Gray controlling Hobo and happily shoving Tom over the edge for the win). Usual complete ridiculousness. :)
C) And then it was time for Jon’s video: “Fallout 4: Point Lookout - Everything Old Is New Again!” This is another video showcasing a Fallout 4 mod, and it’s actually one I saw myself on the Nexus recently – a recreation of the Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout (the one with the maximum creepy eldritch horror stuff), updated and tweaked to account for the Sole Survivor going there instead of the Lone Wanderer! Jon, who has played FO3 quite a bit and who knows the DLC pretty well, wanted to see how it stacked up to the original, using one of his test characters – a young lady named Claire. :) And so far – well, Jon is IMPRESSED. The mod creators have apparently done a fantastic job of recreating the locations, revoicing the characters, and redoing the various quests. Claire started out by accepting a “find my daughter” rescue mission from a frantic Catherine near the docks near University Point and taking the redone paddleboat up to Point Lookout, an old pleasure town. He stopped by the shops but didn’t buy anything, preferring to loot some armor (some classic full-body armor, no less) from a dead smuggler nearby, got himself some nice guns and ammo exploring the overworld, and picked up his first major quest chain in one of the motels – “The Velvet Curtain,” which is basically trying to complete the tasks of a Chinese spy who died when the bombs hit so you can see if you can pick up his reward. This involved hitting Haley’s Hardware, which had a classic FO3-style workbench that could be used for weapons, armor, or chems (that is, so long as you didn’t steal the proprietor’s wrench sitting atop it) to take a look at the guns (apparently shotguns are the way to go in this DLC); going to a bank and popping open a safe-deposit box for the mission instructions; going over to a derelict submarine in the swamps and making it self-destruct (and then getting far enough away so you don’t explode with it); then going to collect the reward, only for the reward to be a trap but fortunately if you’re smart enough you can disable the vent dumping radiation into the room to kill you. Jon got a set of Chinese stealth armor and a nice hardy lever-action rifle out of that – plus he got to fix the local lighthouse by grabbing a new bulb out of the wreckage of a delivery truck. And then got shirty when apparently he got no XP for that (though he might have and didn’t notice). XD But yeah, he had a lot of fun playing through that series of missions –
So much so, in fact, that what was intended to be a one-off video on the mod is growing into a quick miniseries! Jon HAS to see how the rest of the DLC has been recreated, and he figures, since it’s a short DLC, he can do that in a couple of weeks. So next week, more of the Sole Survivor going on Lone Wanderer adventures! I’m quite looking forward to it. :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and work my way toward the statehouse: Check – who has two thumbs and finally made it into the Mass Statehouse? :D And it only took three deaths and one phasing through reality. . . So what happened is this – started out at 6:30 AM 11/25/2287 in the game, with me running back to the Gwinnet Brewery briefly because, well, I’d kind of lost Piper and was wondering if she was still stuck on the roof. Fortunately just going through the front door made her respawn in next to me, AND I was able to pick up some more junk from a locker I’d missed (or which had populated when it was previously empty), so with both companion and materials in hand, Victor was finally able to take a moment to reorient himself and get back on the road!
Right toward where a certain tough enemy named Absalom was hiding in an abandoned house! Apparently this is a randomly-spawned named survivalist enemy who is a BITCH to fight, so I wanted to avoid him if possible. Fortunately, Victor and Piper were able to sneak past his little hideout, and even hit the Joe’s Spuckie’s place next to it to pick up a few things. (And find a hatch to the “Southside Speakeasy,” but it was Master-locked, so there was no way for Victor to crack it yet.) From there it was just a careful creep around the back of the house Absalom was in, and back under an overpass toward the heart of the city again. Piper insisted on taking offense to some garbage squirrels frolicking in the dirt as she and Victor came back around again, but fortunately she didn’t attract any attention from anything else, and they were able to pick up the meat and just continue sneaking through the foggy streets. Working their way through the back alleys and suchlike, following Victor’s Pip-Boy to the main road, led to the back door of one Hester’s Consumer Robotics. Curious, I had them poke their heads in, to find a sort of employee storeroom with goodies, a big garage with a power armor station –
AND A LOAD OF DEADLY ROBOTS, INCLUDING AN ASSAULTRON. Poor Victor was dead in, like three seconds? *wince* Fortunately I’d saved relatively recently, so I just retraced my steps, then had Victor just go in and quickly grab the backroom junk before heading out again. They continued working their way around the wreckages, until I spotted a light across the road, along with a nearby Mr. Handy. Concerned about the Handy, I investigated the light –
It was Slim, the ghoul merchant in his little hideout. I’d completely looped back around. *facepalm* Which meant that Handy was actually the Gunner Mr. Gutsy that had killed Victor a couple of times before. Fortunately, it seemed to have a specific patrol route, and had actually flown away when I turned Victor back around after investigating Slim, so I had him and Piper quickly sneak past and down the first alley leading right. Victor tagged Mass Bay Medical Center, then they kept sneaking around, picking up bits of junk (and random cans of beans on the road) until I found my way to the “main road” by the overpass, complete with a friendly patrolling protectron. Victor and Piper ignored the robot and started into the heart of the city proper, going past all the wrecked buildings and picking up more junk (including a liquid nitrogen dispenser from a mailbox – I was confused too) –
And then, out of nowhere, while going past one of the alleys, the sneak thing goes from [HIDDEN] to [DANGER] and Victor found himself on the wrong side of a LEGENDARY GLOWING RADSCORPION. He blasted it with Righteous Authority as much as he could, but it wasn’t long until he was very, very dead.
Rewind back to Slim’s! I was fortunately able to retrace my steps without issue (and lay another save down near the protectron), but, of course, that still left the radscorpion. I figured “okay, I’ve got mines, and I know where it spawns – maybe I could blow it up when it tries to charge us?”
Yeah, that only works if you remember which button is VATS and which is throwing mines and explosives. *facepalm* With another death under Victor’s belt, I instead pointed him and Piper down another alley before the scorpion’s spawn point, which had a couple of dumpsters –
And that damned Mr. Gutsy! At this point, I decided “Fuck it, the robot’s going down” and pulled out the hunting rifle Victor had picked up in the Brewery to blast it. First shots didn’t kill it, but I got another chance as Piper began engaging with the bot, targeting its eye –
Yeah, uh, Piper was in the way and ended up getting downed. Quite dramatically, in fact. Fortunately Victor killed the Gutsy pretty quickly and then immediately stimpacked her. *wince* Sorry Piper! Victor looted the robot that had given him so much trouble earlier, then he and Piper continued working their way west as per the Pip-Boy. Came across Hub 360 and killed a super mutant on a small balcony who noticed them creeping by, then took a right and continued up the road (Victor stopping in a bus to look for goodies and eat some food as his health was NOT looking so hot). At this point I noticed we were finally getting close to the marker for Nick and started working my way toward that – took an early turning through a parking garage as a shortcut and found myself near the Boston Common, w00! I was just starting to try and find the statehouse through the fog when I noticed enemy activity and started backing up –
. . .not entirely sure what I did, but I THINK Victor clipped through the scenery, as suddenly half the world was missing and Victor couldn’t seem to make it reappear. XD Yeah, the poor guy basically phased right through reality and couldn’t find a way back, even as feral ghouls began to appear. Fortunately I’d dropped a save right after the bus snack, so I reloaded and had Victor and Piper just go straight this time, taking another turning that allowed them to find the Common proper. . .
Along with Park Street Station. They basically entered the Common right next to it. XD Well, at least I know exactly where Nick is. . .sorry, buddy, but I have a specific order I want to do this in, and it involves going to Goodneighbor first! I promise I’ll be back soon. But that DID mean I knew I was in exactly the right place, so all I had to do is carefully creep up the road (avoiding Swann’s Pond), find the right building –
BOOM! WE HAVE ONE MASS STATEHOUSE! Hell, it didn’t even take the whole in-game day – Victor and Piper went inside at around 3 PM game time. :D I had them explore the upper floors a bit – disarming a tripwire, finding the bodies of the raiders and their scavenger captive eaten by the mirelurks, doing a little cooking, checking out the terminals of the main treasurer and Lt. Gov. Graham, killing a bunch of mirelurks and their offspring, finding what looked like an elevator in an area with the main podium, doing a big junk scrap and FINALLY upgrading Victor’s final bit of combat armor (left leg) up to Polymer, and then briefly heading up one of the main ramps to kill another Mirelurk and hear the lurking raiders. Victor and Piper camped out in an old interrogation room at 10:32 PM, and I’ve left it on 11/26/2287 with them having just woken up. Gotta say, plenty of dirt piles for a certain Malkavian Fledgling to be buried in around here. . .all I have to do is find a good one near some of the still-living raiders, and I think we’ll be set there! :D Then I can go back to doing actual plot things. XD
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did the usual catch-up this morning on Victor Luvs Alice, then spent some time after lunch working on that “ship names” post I mentioned the other day. Which took longer than expected, given how many ships I’m listing off, and all the little explanations for them (particularly the weirder ones, like Valicer). . .I’m actually still not done with it, but I made a good start! And, of course, this evening I had to slap my friend Squid’s gift fic in the queue, as it’s their birthday tomorrow. :)
As for Valice Multiverse – nothing special, just one late-arriving ask to slap in that queue. *shrug* Fine by me!
5. Get in a workout: Check! Finally got back on the bike today – and, in keeping with my now-usual pattern of “Oxventure Stream-other video-Oxventure Stream-other video,” I ended up watching a couple of things non-Oxventure-related during my ride:
I. A highlights video showing more of the just-passed “Festival of Thrills” that ran at Alton Towers during April! The video showed off a chunk of the show for Oblivion, a whole song for The Smiler, a whole song for Rita: Queen of Speed (Jon Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer” in fact), part of the show for Nemesis (though the song they were playing, The Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly,” felt more appropriate for their sister ride on the stage, Galactica), and some of the show for Wicker Man. Interesting stuff, though of the shows featured, only Oblivion, Smiler, and Rita had active dancers trying to promote things – with the Rita ones on roller skates! *makes a note that any Rita-based OC I make should be into skating, and probably roller derby* Then again, the video was filmed on a pretty cloudy day, so maybe things were quieter because of bad weather. . . *shrug* It still looked like fun!
II. And part of a Sims 4 mod video from Dee Sims, because my attempts at finding a mod video specifically for vampires bore no fruit (first one I tried was for Sims 3 instead, and second one wasn’t in English). It was just her listing off a bunch of mods she was using in her game, including a loading screen replacer, the “Stand Still in CAS” mod, an air fryer functional object, instant pizza and ice cream menus, and something that intrigued me – a “yellow sticks” mod that allows you to more easily decorate counters and tables – you put the object you want to place on top of a stick of the correct height, then use moveobjects to move it into the counter. No more fiddling with the heights or worrying that your item is going to be floating! Would have appreciated knowing about that while trying to decorate my blue house build, that’s for sure. . .might have to check that one out!
Additionally:
-->Despite persistent dark clouds passing over our house, we did get out to play some beanbags – and I had a VERY good day, I’m pleased to report! :) At the very least, I had a talent of squeaking ahead of the competition. Final scores were me W-W-3-2-W; Dad 2-2-W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2-3-2. Though Mom was gonna pull it out again for the final game, but no dice – perhaps tomorrow, weather permitting!
Hooray, everything accomplished! And with that, I do need to head to bed and prep for work tomorrow. Hopefully it's not too much of a clusterfuck. . .we'll see! Night all!
I also like that I did well on my to-do list:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did this shortly after my playthrough this afternoon, naturally. Victor and Piper had a busy day, looping back around on themselves and getting repeatedly at least slightly lost in the rubble-strewn streets of Boston as they looked for Goodneighbor or Park Street Station. They have at least found the Common, though, and – after fleeing in there from a worrying rumbling in the pond – are currently investigating the Mass Statehouse, which seems to be home to both raiders AND mirelurks at the moment. . .hey, Victor, at least you didn’t die TWICE to the Legendary Radscorpion in this universe (see below).
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout video: Check! Pretty easy tonight, as we only had Gray in the Subs anyway, but it was fun nonetheless –
A) Started with something from the Recommendeds: “Ellen vs Luke Switch Bowling: Barry Sportington Presents the Oxtra Sports Bowling Challenge!” This was footage of Luke and Ellen taking part in a little Switch Sports bowling tournament in a local shopping center (and like good little YouTubers, they were masked) – and as they didn’t have microphones with them, Producer Jon stepped up as “Barry Sportington” to provide voiceover commentary. XD Ellen ruled the early game pretty solidly, with Luke not quite getting the spin he wanted from his virtual ball – but once he perfected his technique? Oh, dude was getting strike after strike, while poor Ellen’s game faltered. He ended up with two strikes in a row on the tenth frame! :D They both did pretty well in the end, but Luke managed to win with a score of 166. Good stuff – especially with Jon’s commentary, goofing over some of the technical difficulties, remarking on the nice indoor trees, pointing out Luke dropping the ball on his virtual foot early on, and trying to figure out what to call where the pins go when you knock them over. XD I hope for more Barry Sportington for future games like these!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! This video, we had a bottle flip with a computer virus (freezes the game), the Yeetron 9000 (a robot that will smash you to pieces), and a win area that actually required you to do a surprise rope swing (to the tune of “In The Hall of the Mountain King”); a jetpack adventure where you had to pick up the coins while not getting stabbed by the spiky electricity (and given how the jetpack started going very fast very quickly, that was not easy); a “murder mystery” board where a bunch of people were killed with random weapons and Gray just flew straight to the win with Pogo Guy (I suspect he flew over the reveal of the killer); a pineapple chunks throw where death, meteors, and exploding taco bell lurked around every corner (also there was a secret win where you had to throw machetes into Tom Hardy’s head); a neon “stunt board” with two different paths to beat (avoiding the spikes and doing a bottle run straight into a battle axe); a board full of 3-D style objects (where Gray was required to shove cylinders into gaps, build bridges, and avoid the evil box of doom); a double escape box where if you avoided the spray of weapons in the first, you could get smashed by the stompy Super Mario Bros block in the second (took Gray a lot of tries to get that ninja kick against the glass wall JUST right); and finally a robot mecha fight between Hobo and Tom Hardy (Gray controlling Hobo and happily shoving Tom over the edge for the win). Usual complete ridiculousness. :)
C) And then it was time for Jon’s video: “Fallout 4: Point Lookout - Everything Old Is New Again!” This is another video showcasing a Fallout 4 mod, and it’s actually one I saw myself on the Nexus recently – a recreation of the Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout (the one with the maximum creepy eldritch horror stuff), updated and tweaked to account for the Sole Survivor going there instead of the Lone Wanderer! Jon, who has played FO3 quite a bit and who knows the DLC pretty well, wanted to see how it stacked up to the original, using one of his test characters – a young lady named Claire. :) And so far – well, Jon is IMPRESSED. The mod creators have apparently done a fantastic job of recreating the locations, revoicing the characters, and redoing the various quests. Claire started out by accepting a “find my daughter” rescue mission from a frantic Catherine near the docks near University Point and taking the redone paddleboat up to Point Lookout, an old pleasure town. He stopped by the shops but didn’t buy anything, preferring to loot some armor (some classic full-body armor, no less) from a dead smuggler nearby, got himself some nice guns and ammo exploring the overworld, and picked up his first major quest chain in one of the motels – “The Velvet Curtain,” which is basically trying to complete the tasks of a Chinese spy who died when the bombs hit so you can see if you can pick up his reward. This involved hitting Haley’s Hardware, which had a classic FO3-style workbench that could be used for weapons, armor, or chems (that is, so long as you didn’t steal the proprietor’s wrench sitting atop it) to take a look at the guns (apparently shotguns are the way to go in this DLC); going to a bank and popping open a safe-deposit box for the mission instructions; going over to a derelict submarine in the swamps and making it self-destruct (and then getting far enough away so you don’t explode with it); then going to collect the reward, only for the reward to be a trap but fortunately if you’re smart enough you can disable the vent dumping radiation into the room to kill you. Jon got a set of Chinese stealth armor and a nice hardy lever-action rifle out of that – plus he got to fix the local lighthouse by grabbing a new bulb out of the wreckage of a delivery truck. And then got shirty when apparently he got no XP for that (though he might have and didn’t notice). XD But yeah, he had a lot of fun playing through that series of missions –
So much so, in fact, that what was intended to be a one-off video on the mod is growing into a quick miniseries! Jon HAS to see how the rest of the DLC has been recreated, and he figures, since it’s a short DLC, he can do that in a couple of weeks. So next week, more of the Sole Survivor going on Lone Wanderer adventures! I’m quite looking forward to it. :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and work my way toward the statehouse: Check – who has two thumbs and finally made it into the Mass Statehouse? :D And it only took three deaths and one phasing through reality. . . So what happened is this – started out at 6:30 AM 11/25/2287 in the game, with me running back to the Gwinnet Brewery briefly because, well, I’d kind of lost Piper and was wondering if she was still stuck on the roof. Fortunately just going through the front door made her respawn in next to me, AND I was able to pick up some more junk from a locker I’d missed (or which had populated when it was previously empty), so with both companion and materials in hand, Victor was finally able to take a moment to reorient himself and get back on the road!
Right toward where a certain tough enemy named Absalom was hiding in an abandoned house! Apparently this is a randomly-spawned named survivalist enemy who is a BITCH to fight, so I wanted to avoid him if possible. Fortunately, Victor and Piper were able to sneak past his little hideout, and even hit the Joe’s Spuckie’s place next to it to pick up a few things. (And find a hatch to the “Southside Speakeasy,” but it was Master-locked, so there was no way for Victor to crack it yet.) From there it was just a careful creep around the back of the house Absalom was in, and back under an overpass toward the heart of the city again. Piper insisted on taking offense to some garbage squirrels frolicking in the dirt as she and Victor came back around again, but fortunately she didn’t attract any attention from anything else, and they were able to pick up the meat and just continue sneaking through the foggy streets. Working their way through the back alleys and suchlike, following Victor’s Pip-Boy to the main road, led to the back door of one Hester’s Consumer Robotics. Curious, I had them poke their heads in, to find a sort of employee storeroom with goodies, a big garage with a power armor station –
AND A LOAD OF DEADLY ROBOTS, INCLUDING AN ASSAULTRON. Poor Victor was dead in, like three seconds? *wince* Fortunately I’d saved relatively recently, so I just retraced my steps, then had Victor just go in and quickly grab the backroom junk before heading out again. They continued working their way around the wreckages, until I spotted a light across the road, along with a nearby Mr. Handy. Concerned about the Handy, I investigated the light –
It was Slim, the ghoul merchant in his little hideout. I’d completely looped back around. *facepalm* Which meant that Handy was actually the Gunner Mr. Gutsy that had killed Victor a couple of times before. Fortunately, it seemed to have a specific patrol route, and had actually flown away when I turned Victor back around after investigating Slim, so I had him and Piper quickly sneak past and down the first alley leading right. Victor tagged Mass Bay Medical Center, then they kept sneaking around, picking up bits of junk (and random cans of beans on the road) until I found my way to the “main road” by the overpass, complete with a friendly patrolling protectron. Victor and Piper ignored the robot and started into the heart of the city proper, going past all the wrecked buildings and picking up more junk (including a liquid nitrogen dispenser from a mailbox – I was confused too) –
And then, out of nowhere, while going past one of the alleys, the sneak thing goes from [HIDDEN] to [DANGER] and Victor found himself on the wrong side of a LEGENDARY GLOWING RADSCORPION. He blasted it with Righteous Authority as much as he could, but it wasn’t long until he was very, very dead.
Rewind back to Slim’s! I was fortunately able to retrace my steps without issue (and lay another save down near the protectron), but, of course, that still left the radscorpion. I figured “okay, I’ve got mines, and I know where it spawns – maybe I could blow it up when it tries to charge us?”
Yeah, that only works if you remember which button is VATS and which is throwing mines and explosives. *facepalm* With another death under Victor’s belt, I instead pointed him and Piper down another alley before the scorpion’s spawn point, which had a couple of dumpsters –
And that damned Mr. Gutsy! At this point, I decided “Fuck it, the robot’s going down” and pulled out the hunting rifle Victor had picked up in the Brewery to blast it. First shots didn’t kill it, but I got another chance as Piper began engaging with the bot, targeting its eye –
Yeah, uh, Piper was in the way and ended up getting downed. Quite dramatically, in fact. Fortunately Victor killed the Gutsy pretty quickly and then immediately stimpacked her. *wince* Sorry Piper! Victor looted the robot that had given him so much trouble earlier, then he and Piper continued working their way west as per the Pip-Boy. Came across Hub 360 and killed a super mutant on a small balcony who noticed them creeping by, then took a right and continued up the road (Victor stopping in a bus to look for goodies and eat some food as his health was NOT looking so hot). At this point I noticed we were finally getting close to the marker for Nick and started working my way toward that – took an early turning through a parking garage as a shortcut and found myself near the Boston Common, w00! I was just starting to try and find the statehouse through the fog when I noticed enemy activity and started backing up –
. . .not entirely sure what I did, but I THINK Victor clipped through the scenery, as suddenly half the world was missing and Victor couldn’t seem to make it reappear. XD Yeah, the poor guy basically phased right through reality and couldn’t find a way back, even as feral ghouls began to appear. Fortunately I’d dropped a save right after the bus snack, so I reloaded and had Victor and Piper just go straight this time, taking another turning that allowed them to find the Common proper. . .
Along with Park Street Station. They basically entered the Common right next to it. XD Well, at least I know exactly where Nick is. . .sorry, buddy, but I have a specific order I want to do this in, and it involves going to Goodneighbor first! I promise I’ll be back soon. But that DID mean I knew I was in exactly the right place, so all I had to do is carefully creep up the road (avoiding Swann’s Pond), find the right building –
BOOM! WE HAVE ONE MASS STATEHOUSE! Hell, it didn’t even take the whole in-game day – Victor and Piper went inside at around 3 PM game time. :D I had them explore the upper floors a bit – disarming a tripwire, finding the bodies of the raiders and their scavenger captive eaten by the mirelurks, doing a little cooking, checking out the terminals of the main treasurer and Lt. Gov. Graham, killing a bunch of mirelurks and their offspring, finding what looked like an elevator in an area with the main podium, doing a big junk scrap and FINALLY upgrading Victor’s final bit of combat armor (left leg) up to Polymer, and then briefly heading up one of the main ramps to kill another Mirelurk and hear the lurking raiders. Victor and Piper camped out in an old interrogation room at 10:32 PM, and I’ve left it on 11/26/2287 with them having just woken up. Gotta say, plenty of dirt piles for a certain Malkavian Fledgling to be buried in around here. . .all I have to do is find a good one near some of the still-living raiders, and I think we’ll be set there! :D Then I can go back to doing actual plot things. XD
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did the usual catch-up this morning on Victor Luvs Alice, then spent some time after lunch working on that “ship names” post I mentioned the other day. Which took longer than expected, given how many ships I’m listing off, and all the little explanations for them (particularly the weirder ones, like Valicer). . .I’m actually still not done with it, but I made a good start! And, of course, this evening I had to slap my friend Squid’s gift fic in the queue, as it’s their birthday tomorrow. :)
As for Valice Multiverse – nothing special, just one late-arriving ask to slap in that queue. *shrug* Fine by me!
5. Get in a workout: Check! Finally got back on the bike today – and, in keeping with my now-usual pattern of “Oxventure Stream-other video-Oxventure Stream-other video,” I ended up watching a couple of things non-Oxventure-related during my ride:
I. A highlights video showing more of the just-passed “Festival of Thrills” that ran at Alton Towers during April! The video showed off a chunk of the show for Oblivion, a whole song for The Smiler, a whole song for Rita: Queen of Speed (Jon Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer” in fact), part of the show for Nemesis (though the song they were playing, The Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly,” felt more appropriate for their sister ride on the stage, Galactica), and some of the show for Wicker Man. Interesting stuff, though of the shows featured, only Oblivion, Smiler, and Rita had active dancers trying to promote things – with the Rita ones on roller skates! *makes a note that any Rita-based OC I make should be into skating, and probably roller derby* Then again, the video was filmed on a pretty cloudy day, so maybe things were quieter because of bad weather. . . *shrug* It still looked like fun!
II. And part of a Sims 4 mod video from Dee Sims, because my attempts at finding a mod video specifically for vampires bore no fruit (first one I tried was for Sims 3 instead, and second one wasn’t in English). It was just her listing off a bunch of mods she was using in her game, including a loading screen replacer, the “Stand Still in CAS” mod, an air fryer functional object, instant pizza and ice cream menus, and something that intrigued me – a “yellow sticks” mod that allows you to more easily decorate counters and tables – you put the object you want to place on top of a stick of the correct height, then use moveobjects to move it into the counter. No more fiddling with the heights or worrying that your item is going to be floating! Would have appreciated knowing about that while trying to decorate my blue house build, that’s for sure. . .might have to check that one out!
Additionally:
-->Despite persistent dark clouds passing over our house, we did get out to play some beanbags – and I had a VERY good day, I’m pleased to report! :) At the very least, I had a talent of squeaking ahead of the competition. Final scores were me W-W-3-2-W; Dad 2-2-W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2-3-2. Though Mom was gonna pull it out again for the final game, but no dice – perhaps tomorrow, weather permitting!
Hooray, everything accomplished! And with that, I do need to head to bed and prep for work tomorrow. Hopefully it's not too much of a clusterfuck. . .we'll see! Night all!
