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Day Seven Of The Plague
Feb. 4th, 2023 11:47 pmToday's Covid Update: Well, I'm down to being a little stuffy mainly when I first wake up and in the evening hours now. So that's good progress at least! We're all testing again tomorrow, and HOPEFULLY I will have my first proper negative test. Or at least the positive will be down to a weak positive. Dunno if I'll get into work for Monday, but Tuesday or Wednesday are definitely looking more doable! Not that I'm EAGER to return to work (especially with the pile of crap to catch up with that I'm sure is waiting for me), but it'll be nice to start returning to a semblance of a normal life. I mean, yeah, I spend loads of time in my room anyway, but the antsy is starting to set in. (Or maybe that's just PMS -- I do tend to be more jittery and anxious as I get closer to my period, and it HAS been moving up in the month. . .)
Anyway, still in Isolation Mode for the moment, and still trying to stay productive during it -- here's how that worked out today:
Tumblr: Pretty good day on the old tumblrs – I did a dash and tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before and during lunch, then after returning my tray, wrote up the full text for all five of the Chill Valicer update posts, plus part of the text for the next OT3 meme! So I’m almost entirely set for next week’s queued posts. :)
As for Valice Multiverse, answered a few ask replies over there this evening – it’s not HOPPING, but it’s busy enough to justify having the tab open! XD
Sims 4: More building on “Gutknecht Bend” today, as I said I probably would! Most of it was trying to bang out a layout for the bottom floor that allowed for a kitchen, a bedroom, and a dining room (the bathroom I already had down, it was hidden behind the stairs. Got something I was reasonably happy with in the end, with everything kind of centering around a t-shaped hallway past the stairs. No real “living” area, admittedly, which I might try to rectify in the future. . .though it’ll probably involve making the house itself a bit bigger. Hmm. We’ll see! At any rate, it’s mostly a mix of Vampires, Realm of Magic, and Cottage Living stuff just at the moment, and I’m trying to use stuff that works with the “Off The Grid” challenge because, well, I’m building this place as if it’s part of my Blades in the Dark Valicer universe, and it HAS been abandoned for a while if that’s the case. Though it’s also very expensive thanks to the stuff I’m using to make it look “right.” XD Anyway, got the basics of the kitchen, bathroom, and the magic room upstairs sorted. I’ll probably keep fiddling with it on and off and see if I can get it into a shape I’m happy with. This one’s mostly a “just for fun” build, so I’m okay with letting it sit for a bit. :P
Writing: Did more of the scene I was working on the other day with my Blades in the Dark Valicer stuff, with Emily finding Victor in the Mangled Mermaid, Victor having to tell her he’s already engaged, and Nanny revealing that Victoria is in fact already married as of that evening. Nanny finally remembered that the groom in question was a “Lord Barkis,” which made Emily reveal that her killer was named Barkis, and her and Victor decide that they have to check out this new husband of Victoria’s right now. Smiler insisted on going along to help pay for the gondola to Brightstone and provide backup, and Alice offered her services along those lines too, admitting that taking down an asshole who preys on young women appeals to her. . .which led to her telling them about how the fire was set by someone who was stalking her sister, not the family cat (though she has yet to admit said stalker was Dr. Bumby, unsure if she can trust them that far). Everyone is now determined she come along so she can at least TRY to report all this to the police! *nods* And so I left the scene with them about to head out to Brightstone! :) A shame I already know this all goes pear-shaped once they get there. . .
YouTube: Just the two videos today, but given that one of them was an hour and a half, I think I probably watched roughly the same amount of YouTube as I did the day I was practically binging it. XD But I have kept up with everything I wanted to watch –
A) First up, after working on my latest Sims 4 build, was the OXBox stream I noticed yesterday – “Hitman Freelancer Mode LIVE: WOULD YOU HIRE THIS HITMAN?” Otherwise known as “Hitman Freelancer FULL MIKE,” as per the thumbnail. XD This was Mike and Andy showing off the new Hitman: Freelancer mode, with Mike on the controls and Andy playing his EXTREMELY exasperated Diana as they tried a couple of campaigns to take down syndicates and maybe brighten up Mike’s very-low-level safehouse a bit. As per their Discord and YouTube Chat requests, they ended up taking on a pair of eco-terrorist groups, The Bee and The Dumper (yes, they were chosen on the strength of their ridiculous names XD). Here’s how they went down:
I. The Bee – Mike did all right on the first two targets in Sapienza and Argentina, despite constantly starting in odd locations where he was immediately trespassing (which he complained mightily about XD). In Sapienza, he ended up letting the guard lead him to about where he needed to be, then stole his clothes, found his way down to the target in the cellar, knocked out an inconvenient guard, lobbed a fire axe into the guy’s head, ran for it into another part of the crumbling fort and hid out until the heat died down, then just walked out the front door and escaped in the VW Bug outside; in Argentina, he managed to take down a couple of guards with a propane flask, steal one of their outfits, dump the bodies over the edge of the fence, work his way into the party with his propane flask, find his target and tail him for a bit to learn his routine (nearly getting himself locked out of a private area in the process), finally decide to drop the propane flask near him and blow it up (SOMEHOW not blowing himself up in the process), and fled into one of the convenient lavender planters, where he lured in a waiter and took his outfit to escape. Unfortunately, as he essentially ignored all the optional objectives, he didn’t have very good payouts from his missions. And then the third mission in Whittleston Creek went balls-up because Mike, in trying to identify the leader of The Bee from their tells (panicking all the while about the game telling him about nearby assassins and lookouts), managed to zero in on EXACTLY THE WRONG GUY, attempt to blow him up, get startled when informed the target was escaping, managed to run around and find the right guy (who was someone he’d actually completely written off earlier), got off a shot and killed him – but got gunned down by all the guards before he could successfully exit the level. Campaign failed, The Bee retreated into hiding, and Mike managed to unlock the “I’m Back” outfit, which is basically 47 covered in bandages. XD He DID also manage to unlock the Wardrobe for starting disguise changes though, meaning he was at least able to dress himself up as a clown afterward.
II. The Dumper – being able to get his beloved clown outfit seems to have been a good omen for Mike, as this campaign ended up going better for him! Not MUCH better mind. . .on his first trip to the Maldives to take out two of the Dumper’s agents, he got a kitchen staff outfit to poison someone’s food, only to get made by the bartender and have to switch back to his clown outfit; then, as a clown, he managed to drop a banana right in front of one of his reclining targets to make her slip, only to be targeted as suspicious once she went down and have to go BACK to the kitchen outfit. XD And even THEN he had to do one final change to a guard’s outfit to fully shake suspicion. But he did take out both targets – causing one to eat poisoned oysters, following him down to the toilet, and drowning him there, and just grabbing a butcher’s cleaver from the kitchen and wanging it into her head to take care of the other – and he escaped successfully AND with extra money from completing an optional objective! :) The second trip, to Ambrose Island, went kind of similarly – Mike managed to take out the first target in the beach party town without TOO much trouble (an agent disguised as a laundress, which made Mike feel bad) by lobbing an explosive golf ball in through her window and then legging it, but his attempts to get the second target, a metalworker, to either have an accident with his welding tank (requiring him to loosen the valves with a wrench, which he didn’t have) or slip over hilariously (requiring him to drop a banana in just the right spot) were stymied by him noticing Mike when he tried to disguise himself as a metalworker, and then spotting him CHANGING disguises when he tried to go back to being a pirate guard. Mike eventually had to just wang a screwdriver into his head, then run around in circles and sneak back out through the compound (hunted all the while, to Andy’s annoyance) before finally finding a boat to escape in. So no optional objectives this time, but he did at least find and knockout both couriers, allowing him to pick up THEIR money! And then the final mission ended up being a comedy-of-errors speed run in Columbia – he managed to immediately eliminate one suspect due to their lack of tattoos, but was stymied by the next one he found because she happened to be wearing a long-sleeve jacket; upon following her and finding she had a bunch of the tells and seeing with his Hitman Vision that the other two suspects were miles away, he decided to just try and blow her up when she isolated herself with the Pale Duck he’d gotten from Diana and see what happened; she DID turn out to be the correct target, but the Pale Duck explosive DIDN’T kill her, forcing Mike to punch her out and snap her neck; and he just BARELY outran being shot to death by ducking in a number of buildings to allow himself a few moments to Hitman Heal, making it to an exit boat just in time. Poor Andy looked like he was going to have a heart attack. XD
But yes, second time proved to be the charm – they completed that chapter of the campaign, and Mike earned himself a nice new gun AND some motivational posters to hang up in the safehouse! He chose the “Do YOU Need To Go To The Bathroom?” and “Fortune Favors The Bald” designs. XD Delighted to see the usual Hitman Chaos back on the channel – and Andy has indicated he definitely wants to do more of this mode on-screen, though possibly after he’s run through it a little more and unlocked more stuff for the safehouse to show off. :) I’m game!
B) And then, after writing and a cup of hot chocolate, it was time for the Subs video – GrayStillPlays and “Testing Cars vs MASSIVE Speed Bumps in GTA 5!” Another Alex challenge board, this one a seven-mile-long speed bump course elevated across the map! Gray had twelve cars to pick from and two minutes to run the course, going over speed bumps ranging from weird maze-like bits of scenery, to small bits of platform, to straight up ramps, to people (or, as Gray kept insisting, “cake baked to LOOK like people and filled with raspberry jam”), to balloons that would pop and fill the screen with scraps of rubber while knocking the car around, to giant humps in the road, to smaller but much more frequent humps (basically the entire road became a series of waves), to bits of machinery that would pop the tires of unsuspecting cars, to bowling pins and bowling balls, to – of course – the still-spinning blades of sideways wind turbines. Did I mention this course was timed and he had to complete it in two minutes? And that he only had twelve cars to try (though admittedly all had hydraulics to help him over the bumps)? And if a car was knocked off the elevated course, it did NOT respawn in the picking area and was basically lost forever? Yeaaah, this was a hell of a teeth-clencher, let me tell you! Some cars were absolute garbage right from the start (Gray attempted the clown van right away on the basis of “Alex would have definitely designed this for the goofiest car” – he did not; he also did not get far with the ‘Merica truck or the four-wheel-bike), while others ALMOST went the distance (he did pretty damn well in the monster truck and this weird super-squat car I think he called a “Seneca” – it was basically a cube on huge wheels – and the technicolor tank ALMOST went the distance), but the car that actually made it through? Gray’s second-to-last choice? An absolute rust bucket of a truck that Gray thought would be too tall and thus have too high a center of gravity to make it. As it turned out, though, the height was a plus at getting over the early bumps, it handled the waviest area like a dream, it tore through the tire-popping machinery, and it plowed through the windmill blades to make it to the checkpoint with ONE SECOND TO SPARE. Gray was absolutely shocked. XD Just your average Saturday night in GTA V!
Not too shabby! It's nice to be ahead of the queue like this for a change. I suspect that will all come crashing down once I'm back at work, of course, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. :p
And now I'm doing more of the social thing, so I shall be off. Fallout Sunday tomorrow -- gonna clean up the Castle a bit more and try to get it looking nice, I think! Also keep up with the YouTube Subs and Jon's latest, finish up the text for that OT3 meme post, and -- I DO have an idea for another Valicertine, actually, so -- might make that before bed. I need at least three, after all! So yeah, good night, sleep tight, hope you're all well!
Anyway, still in Isolation Mode for the moment, and still trying to stay productive during it -- here's how that worked out today:
Tumblr: Pretty good day on the old tumblrs – I did a dash and tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before and during lunch, then after returning my tray, wrote up the full text for all five of the Chill Valicer update posts, plus part of the text for the next OT3 meme! So I’m almost entirely set for next week’s queued posts. :)
As for Valice Multiverse, answered a few ask replies over there this evening – it’s not HOPPING, but it’s busy enough to justify having the tab open! XD
Sims 4: More building on “Gutknecht Bend” today, as I said I probably would! Most of it was trying to bang out a layout for the bottom floor that allowed for a kitchen, a bedroom, and a dining room (the bathroom I already had down, it was hidden behind the stairs. Got something I was reasonably happy with in the end, with everything kind of centering around a t-shaped hallway past the stairs. No real “living” area, admittedly, which I might try to rectify in the future. . .though it’ll probably involve making the house itself a bit bigger. Hmm. We’ll see! At any rate, it’s mostly a mix of Vampires, Realm of Magic, and Cottage Living stuff just at the moment, and I’m trying to use stuff that works with the “Off The Grid” challenge because, well, I’m building this place as if it’s part of my Blades in the Dark Valicer universe, and it HAS been abandoned for a while if that’s the case. Though it’s also very expensive thanks to the stuff I’m using to make it look “right.” XD Anyway, got the basics of the kitchen, bathroom, and the magic room upstairs sorted. I’ll probably keep fiddling with it on and off and see if I can get it into a shape I’m happy with. This one’s mostly a “just for fun” build, so I’m okay with letting it sit for a bit. :P
Writing: Did more of the scene I was working on the other day with my Blades in the Dark Valicer stuff, with Emily finding Victor in the Mangled Mermaid, Victor having to tell her he’s already engaged, and Nanny revealing that Victoria is in fact already married as of that evening. Nanny finally remembered that the groom in question was a “Lord Barkis,” which made Emily reveal that her killer was named Barkis, and her and Victor decide that they have to check out this new husband of Victoria’s right now. Smiler insisted on going along to help pay for the gondola to Brightstone and provide backup, and Alice offered her services along those lines too, admitting that taking down an asshole who preys on young women appeals to her. . .which led to her telling them about how the fire was set by someone who was stalking her sister, not the family cat (though she has yet to admit said stalker was Dr. Bumby, unsure if she can trust them that far). Everyone is now determined she come along so she can at least TRY to report all this to the police! *nods* And so I left the scene with them about to head out to Brightstone! :) A shame I already know this all goes pear-shaped once they get there. . .
YouTube: Just the two videos today, but given that one of them was an hour and a half, I think I probably watched roughly the same amount of YouTube as I did the day I was practically binging it. XD But I have kept up with everything I wanted to watch –
A) First up, after working on my latest Sims 4 build, was the OXBox stream I noticed yesterday – “Hitman Freelancer Mode LIVE: WOULD YOU HIRE THIS HITMAN?” Otherwise known as “Hitman Freelancer FULL MIKE,” as per the thumbnail. XD This was Mike and Andy showing off the new Hitman: Freelancer mode, with Mike on the controls and Andy playing his EXTREMELY exasperated Diana as they tried a couple of campaigns to take down syndicates and maybe brighten up Mike’s very-low-level safehouse a bit. As per their Discord and YouTube Chat requests, they ended up taking on a pair of eco-terrorist groups, The Bee and The Dumper (yes, they were chosen on the strength of their ridiculous names XD). Here’s how they went down:
I. The Bee – Mike did all right on the first two targets in Sapienza and Argentina, despite constantly starting in odd locations where he was immediately trespassing (which he complained mightily about XD). In Sapienza, he ended up letting the guard lead him to about where he needed to be, then stole his clothes, found his way down to the target in the cellar, knocked out an inconvenient guard, lobbed a fire axe into the guy’s head, ran for it into another part of the crumbling fort and hid out until the heat died down, then just walked out the front door and escaped in the VW Bug outside; in Argentina, he managed to take down a couple of guards with a propane flask, steal one of their outfits, dump the bodies over the edge of the fence, work his way into the party with his propane flask, find his target and tail him for a bit to learn his routine (nearly getting himself locked out of a private area in the process), finally decide to drop the propane flask near him and blow it up (SOMEHOW not blowing himself up in the process), and fled into one of the convenient lavender planters, where he lured in a waiter and took his outfit to escape. Unfortunately, as he essentially ignored all the optional objectives, he didn’t have very good payouts from his missions. And then the third mission in Whittleston Creek went balls-up because Mike, in trying to identify the leader of The Bee from their tells (panicking all the while about the game telling him about nearby assassins and lookouts), managed to zero in on EXACTLY THE WRONG GUY, attempt to blow him up, get startled when informed the target was escaping, managed to run around and find the right guy (who was someone he’d actually completely written off earlier), got off a shot and killed him – but got gunned down by all the guards before he could successfully exit the level. Campaign failed, The Bee retreated into hiding, and Mike managed to unlock the “I’m Back” outfit, which is basically 47 covered in bandages. XD He DID also manage to unlock the Wardrobe for starting disguise changes though, meaning he was at least able to dress himself up as a clown afterward.
II. The Dumper – being able to get his beloved clown outfit seems to have been a good omen for Mike, as this campaign ended up going better for him! Not MUCH better mind. . .on his first trip to the Maldives to take out two of the Dumper’s agents, he got a kitchen staff outfit to poison someone’s food, only to get made by the bartender and have to switch back to his clown outfit; then, as a clown, he managed to drop a banana right in front of one of his reclining targets to make her slip, only to be targeted as suspicious once she went down and have to go BACK to the kitchen outfit. XD And even THEN he had to do one final change to a guard’s outfit to fully shake suspicion. But he did take out both targets – causing one to eat poisoned oysters, following him down to the toilet, and drowning him there, and just grabbing a butcher’s cleaver from the kitchen and wanging it into her head to take care of the other – and he escaped successfully AND with extra money from completing an optional objective! :) The second trip, to Ambrose Island, went kind of similarly – Mike managed to take out the first target in the beach party town without TOO much trouble (an agent disguised as a laundress, which made Mike feel bad) by lobbing an explosive golf ball in through her window and then legging it, but his attempts to get the second target, a metalworker, to either have an accident with his welding tank (requiring him to loosen the valves with a wrench, which he didn’t have) or slip over hilariously (requiring him to drop a banana in just the right spot) were stymied by him noticing Mike when he tried to disguise himself as a metalworker, and then spotting him CHANGING disguises when he tried to go back to being a pirate guard. Mike eventually had to just wang a screwdriver into his head, then run around in circles and sneak back out through the compound (hunted all the while, to Andy’s annoyance) before finally finding a boat to escape in. So no optional objectives this time, but he did at least find and knockout both couriers, allowing him to pick up THEIR money! And then the final mission ended up being a comedy-of-errors speed run in Columbia – he managed to immediately eliminate one suspect due to their lack of tattoos, but was stymied by the next one he found because she happened to be wearing a long-sleeve jacket; upon following her and finding she had a bunch of the tells and seeing with his Hitman Vision that the other two suspects were miles away, he decided to just try and blow her up when she isolated herself with the Pale Duck he’d gotten from Diana and see what happened; she DID turn out to be the correct target, but the Pale Duck explosive DIDN’T kill her, forcing Mike to punch her out and snap her neck; and he just BARELY outran being shot to death by ducking in a number of buildings to allow himself a few moments to Hitman Heal, making it to an exit boat just in time. Poor Andy looked like he was going to have a heart attack. XD
But yes, second time proved to be the charm – they completed that chapter of the campaign, and Mike earned himself a nice new gun AND some motivational posters to hang up in the safehouse! He chose the “Do YOU Need To Go To The Bathroom?” and “Fortune Favors The Bald” designs. XD Delighted to see the usual Hitman Chaos back on the channel – and Andy has indicated he definitely wants to do more of this mode on-screen, though possibly after he’s run through it a little more and unlocked more stuff for the safehouse to show off. :) I’m game!
B) And then, after writing and a cup of hot chocolate, it was time for the Subs video – GrayStillPlays and “Testing Cars vs MASSIVE Speed Bumps in GTA 5!” Another Alex challenge board, this one a seven-mile-long speed bump course elevated across the map! Gray had twelve cars to pick from and two minutes to run the course, going over speed bumps ranging from weird maze-like bits of scenery, to small bits of platform, to straight up ramps, to people (or, as Gray kept insisting, “cake baked to LOOK like people and filled with raspberry jam”), to balloons that would pop and fill the screen with scraps of rubber while knocking the car around, to giant humps in the road, to smaller but much more frequent humps (basically the entire road became a series of waves), to bits of machinery that would pop the tires of unsuspecting cars, to bowling pins and bowling balls, to – of course – the still-spinning blades of sideways wind turbines. Did I mention this course was timed and he had to complete it in two minutes? And that he only had twelve cars to try (though admittedly all had hydraulics to help him over the bumps)? And if a car was knocked off the elevated course, it did NOT respawn in the picking area and was basically lost forever? Yeaaah, this was a hell of a teeth-clencher, let me tell you! Some cars were absolute garbage right from the start (Gray attempted the clown van right away on the basis of “Alex would have definitely designed this for the goofiest car” – he did not; he also did not get far with the ‘Merica truck or the four-wheel-bike), while others ALMOST went the distance (he did pretty damn well in the monster truck and this weird super-squat car I think he called a “Seneca” – it was basically a cube on huge wheels – and the technicolor tank ALMOST went the distance), but the car that actually made it through? Gray’s second-to-last choice? An absolute rust bucket of a truck that Gray thought would be too tall and thus have too high a center of gravity to make it. As it turned out, though, the height was a plus at getting over the early bumps, it handled the waviest area like a dream, it tore through the tire-popping machinery, and it plowed through the windmill blades to make it to the checkpoint with ONE SECOND TO SPARE. Gray was absolutely shocked. XD Just your average Saturday night in GTA V!
Not too shabby! It's nice to be ahead of the queue like this for a change. I suspect that will all come crashing down once I'm back at work, of course, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. :p
And now I'm doing more of the social thing, so I shall be off. Fallout Sunday tomorrow -- gonna clean up the Castle a bit more and try to get it looking nice, I think! Also keep up with the YouTube Subs and Jon's latest, finish up the text for that OT3 meme post, and -- I DO have an idea for another Valicertine, actually, so -- might make that before bed. I need at least three, after all! So yeah, good night, sleep tight, hope you're all well!
