![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Not Great Very Cold Wednesday
Feb. 7th, 2024 11:53 pmWhat do I mean by that (especially since it did actually reach 42F here today)? Well, take a gander --
Work – Sooo – the heat was out in the building for most of the day. There was an e-mail notice around 9 AM that the boiler was off, but that it was only a temporary thing, and it would be up and running again soon. . .aaaand it wasn’t until about 2:30 PM that the heat turned back on, and after 3 PM when it started actually blowing WARM air again. I spent a good portion of the morning near freezing, and had resorted to working in my coat when my boss managed to find me a space heater to use. Still took a while to warm up, though. . . The day itself was largely quiet, without many phone calls – I spent my time cleaning up some obituaries and some returned mail. Wouldn’t have been too bad if the fucking boiler had been on. . .hopefully there will be no more incidents upon the morrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure: Deadlands, “Forty Times A Killer, Part I” – and Part II because I only had eight minutes left on Part I. XD Anyway, we wrapped up Part I with Harker inflicting a Wound on Edie that left her with a horrible burning sensation in her arm and, later, a worrying cough; Silas promptly unloading into him with his guns (leaving the “good” Pox Walker “doctor” shaken); Edie – having decided she’d had enough of the bullshit – pulling out a sawed-off Winchester from under her dress and unloading into Harker, bringing him up to three Wounds (Silas was like “do I WANT to know where you were keeping that??”); Harker ATTEMPTING to stab Silas to start the next combat round, but failing because he was so wobbly; Edie ATTEMPTING to blast Harker with her Winchester again, only to get distracted by her arm and space out in worry; and Silas FINALLY bringing an end to things with his two Colts. Causing Harker’s head to explode in a shower of pus and gore all over his bookshelf. *eugh* Silas grabbed a poker from the fireplace and managed to fish Harker’s keyring off his corpse without touching it, gaining them the key both to the office door and the treatment room –
And that brought us into Part II, where the pair decided that, much as they wanted to get away from that Pox Walker corpse, they SHOULD spend some time healing themselves. Cue twenty minutes of doctoring, with Edie taking care of her own wounds and Silas’s (as he failed his own roll). As they patched themselves up, there was a whine (from Silas) and the lights flickered as something happened deeper in the facility. Shortly thereafter, an announcement came from Ducrow over the steampunky “speaking tubes” intercom, asking the disposal team to get to the treatment area. Silas suggested they get over there to see what was what, and the pair managed to lock up Harker’s office behind them and stealthily make their way over to the treatment area. Beyond the big door, they found a poorly-lit corridor, lined with dark rooms all labeled with Greek letters (alpha, beta, gamma, etc), with two brightly-lit rooms at the very end. As they entered, two people in white boiler suits came out of one of the lit rooms, dragging a gurney with them – fortunately they didn’t see the pair, but instead headed in the opposite direction, out a pair of double doors at the far end of the corridor, which ended in a T-section. Silas decided to peek into one of the dark rooms, and found nothing inside except some medical equipment that hadn’t been used in a LONG while to judge from all the dust. Traveling down the corridor revealed most of the other rooms were the same way, filled with various discredited medical items – and yes, discredited in the time period of the actual GAME. People in the Weird West might believe in the curative powers of cocaine, but they have figured out phrenology is a quack. XD Edie commented that this place may not really be about MEDICINE – Silas asked if it was the horrible plague zombie that tipped her off. XD
Any further banter, however, was cut off by the arrival of two orderlies, wheeling along a gurney containing one Senator Waxman! Fortunately, Edie and Silas managed to get into cover in one of the empty rooms in time (Silas just BARELY, thanks to a middling roll), and they were able to overhear the orderlies assuring Waxman that he would be fine in five minutes, and that this would be the best ten thousand dollars he ever spent. They then took him into one of the well-lit rooms – Silas decided to go sneak up and take a peek in through the observation window, with Edie following. He did good on the Sneaking roll, but failed the Notice roll, so opening the observation shutter knocked his hat over his eyes. XD Edie, however, picked up the Noticing slack, and saw that the room beyond had a very curious contraption in it – a pair of glass tubes with padded backs, connected at the top by a flexible hose, with one currently empty and an absolutely wretched man in the other, utterly wracked with disease and seemingly barely conscious. The orderlies got Waxman into the other tube and pulled a lever –
And cue the lights flickering and some absolutely godawful screaming coming from the poor pox-riddled man. I KNEW they were basically sucking the disease out of their clients and putting them into the poor townsfolk! Edie confirmed this, and said she wasn’t sure what they could do for the poor man in the tube, other than find Ducrow and bring her to a swift end. . .
But in the end, neither she nor Silas could stand around and do nothing about this. Edie checked out the orderlies with a pair of Notice rolls – first to determine if they were armed in any way (no), and second, with a mirror, to determine if they too were Pox Walkers (also no, whew). She and Silas thus burst in and attempted to smack them over the head with a large heavy bowl and a bedpan respectively –
But both of them failed the “Fightin’” roll, so they ended up basically high-fiving with their respective implements. The orderlies WERE surprised, at least, and not looking for a fight, so Edie promptly demanded that they stop the procedure before it completed, with Silas demanding that they listen to her. This, unfortunately, turned the roll from “Persuasion” into “Intimidation,” a skill Edie did NOT have, and with her penalty she ended up rolling a two. Fortunately one orderly rolled a one and was intimidated anyway – the other stood his ground, even when Silas tried his own Intimidation roll (turns out he’s not skilled in it either). Edie quickly switched tactics, trying a few kind words and saying it was for their own good to stop the procedure – THIS allowed her to use her much-better Persuasion AND her “Attractive” edge, charming the man, who decided he liked the look of her and allowed his frightened companion to pull the lever to stop things. Ended it with Senator Waxman complaining that they weren’t finished and he still had his bloody (literally) cough – we’ll see how Edie and Silas respond to that tomorrow!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though I had to do it fucking twice after I accidentally cut the power to the bedrooms by using my blow dryer to dry my hair at the same time Mom was using hers to warm up her and Dad’s bed, and when I got my computer back on, LibreWriter acted like I hadn’t saved anything when I KNOW I did. >( Anyway – Alice has finished her conversation with Officer Chunk (including learning his name) and has made her way up to LaCroix’s lavish penthouse office (after complaining in her head to Wonderland about how hard it is to drag any bit of information out of her fellow vampires during the elevator ride up). Time for her to report on her success in Santa Monica and get her next mission!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – despite tripping the circuit breaker, I was able to get through my GrayStillPlays video of the day – “$1 vs $1,000 Mega Ramp in GTA 5!” Or, rather, $1 vs $10 vs $100 vs $1,000 ramps, because it would be a little weird to have just two. :p As in the classic days of Gray buying boards off Fiverr (which, I remind everyone, is how he met Alex in the first place), Gray paid four people increasing amounts of money to build him ramp challenges, then demonstrated them sequentially. Here’s how that went –
I. $1 Ramp Challenge, by Sawsage – an appropriately janky challenge for the cheapest level, this one had random ramps lying and floating all over the place, a bunch of cars scattered on the rooftop, a hidden boost meant to troll Gray, a very uneven ramp made out of ramps, and a small checkpoint not quite aligned at the end – it was small because Sawsage didn’t know how to make it bigger. Interestingly enough, that lack of knowledge actually provided Gray with a genuine challenge, as he had to figure out exactly how fast and at what angle he had to come off the ramp to actually hit the smaller checkpoint. Took him a couple of tries, but he got it with the pink off-roader!
II. $10 Ramp Challenge, by Tim V – a farm-themed challenge, with a ramp made out of bundles of hay (and with a cow that occasionally spawned on it, much to Gray’s shock and surprise), that led into a barn fronted with breakaway walls. Gray basically had to come off the ramp, break through the walls, then thumbnail hole through the top of the barn into the checkpoint. He insisted on trying the ever-mocked Sherp provided to him first, just to see if it would get anywhere (it could make it to the very EDGE of the barn, but no farther), but – after some time spent smashing apart the boards – got through with the yellow spoiler car. Nice.
III. $100 Ramp Challenge (Tightrope Thumbnail Mega Ramp), by HNDLTN – this is where the challenges started getting really serious. Gray had to go down a pretty damn steep ramp, dodging the various bumps and ridges HNDLTN had put on the platforms, then jump off the end and through the top of one of the fancier buildings, avoiding a windmill right in front of it, then come out the other side onto a platform surrounded by fireworks, where he could use another boosted ramp to reach the checkpoint. Gray insisted on completing the initial ramp with the bright pink tractor trailer cab with the giant pointy plow on it (just to see if he COULD – it was rough, but he did it), then started trying serious cars. One car not only practically flew off the ramp the first time he tried it, but nearly went OVER the building instead – Gray tried to see if that was a viable way to complete the challenge, but discovered there was a partially-invisible wall there (partially because it pulsed into visibility every so often – Gray just hadn’t been sure if it was always SOLID), so he swapped cars and tried again. Turns out the banana yellow super car with the “TIGHT FIT” license plate could JUST get through if Gray banked it the right way! Pretty clever stuff there!
IV. $1,000 Ramp Challenge (Carousel Ramp), by Alex AKA Satan – “It only takes 32 seconds, how hard can it be?” Oh, pretty bad. . . But yes, we couldn’t have a GTA V video without Alex demonstrating one of his classic Torture Boards, and this one was very interesting indeed. For what Alex built was not one ramp, but FOUR, which all rotated around the top of a building at set intervals. So while Gray was going down one ramp, it would suddenly teleport out from under him, and another ramp would teleport in. Only one – the pink ramp – actually had the proper “ramp” bit at the end that would let Gray go through the winning circle, so Gray had to time this right so he got that ramp at the end of his descent, and all of the ramps had various challenges on them that Gray had to complete in order to make it down. In order, Gray had to start on the first yellow ramp, avoid the line of three green mini-ramps and the rotating circle of red mini-ramps, but make sure to HIT the purple mini-ramp so that – when the purple ramp teleported in right afterward – he could jump the gap Alex had put into the middle of it. Then, on the purple ramp, he had to do the yellow LOOP-DE-LOOP Alex had put on it and get shoved into the corridor on the far left side – so when the SECOND yellow ramp teleported in, he was on the green tightrope Alex had left there for him. THEN, on the second yellow ramp, he had to weave back over to the right to get onto the right-side white tightrope (the left-side one was fake), then swerve back left as FAST as possible to get on the far-left-side red tightrope, where – if he’d timed everything right and was going fast enough – when the pink ramp teleported in, he’d be on the partial green tightrope that led to the actual curve upward that would launch him into the win. *whew* Gray called this one of the most torturous ramp boards he’d ever done, but he DID indeed do it! Because he’s Gray and he never gives up. XD Good times – always fun to get a little fresh new blood in the Gray Torture Pool! Though, of course, nobody does it like Alex. :p
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only had to worry about the Victor Luvs Alice queue today, and I remembered to drop the queue speed back down to one post per today for tomorrow’s post about Duskwall slang. I’d HOPED to try and get some more stuff in the queue as well, but – well. See the part where I accidentally tripped the circuit breaker by daring to use my blow dryer at the same time as Mom, and then had to redo my editing on today’s LB:DQ chunk. Though I did at least get another Not-Incorrect Quote scene done for the next collection of Valicer In The Dark Not-Incorrect Quotes. . . *sigh* Something! I also briefly stopped by my Valice Multiverse blog to check on my messages with Marie, and it looks like I have an idea for her birthday fic, yay. :) Maybe I can crack that out tomorrow as I’m between chapters on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of!”
So -- yeah. Between almost freezing my ass off at work and the circuit breaker incident this evening, I am in a Mood. Which isn't helped by the fact that I strongly suspect at this point I'm also PMSing. *heavy sigh* And now I'm late getting to bed, which -- yeah. Here's hoping Thursday is better. Night all.
Work – Sooo – the heat was out in the building for most of the day. There was an e-mail notice around 9 AM that the boiler was off, but that it was only a temporary thing, and it would be up and running again soon. . .aaaand it wasn’t until about 2:30 PM that the heat turned back on, and after 3 PM when it started actually blowing WARM air again. I spent a good portion of the morning near freezing, and had resorted to working in my coat when my boss managed to find me a space heater to use. Still took a while to warm up, though. . . The day itself was largely quiet, without many phone calls – I spent my time cleaning up some obituaries and some returned mail. Wouldn’t have been too bad if the fucking boiler had been on. . .hopefully there will be no more incidents upon the morrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure: Deadlands, “Forty Times A Killer, Part I” – and Part II because I only had eight minutes left on Part I. XD Anyway, we wrapped up Part I with Harker inflicting a Wound on Edie that left her with a horrible burning sensation in her arm and, later, a worrying cough; Silas promptly unloading into him with his guns (leaving the “good” Pox Walker “doctor” shaken); Edie – having decided she’d had enough of the bullshit – pulling out a sawed-off Winchester from under her dress and unloading into Harker, bringing him up to three Wounds (Silas was like “do I WANT to know where you were keeping that??”); Harker ATTEMPTING to stab Silas to start the next combat round, but failing because he was so wobbly; Edie ATTEMPTING to blast Harker with her Winchester again, only to get distracted by her arm and space out in worry; and Silas FINALLY bringing an end to things with his two Colts. Causing Harker’s head to explode in a shower of pus and gore all over his bookshelf. *eugh* Silas grabbed a poker from the fireplace and managed to fish Harker’s keyring off his corpse without touching it, gaining them the key both to the office door and the treatment room –
And that brought us into Part II, where the pair decided that, much as they wanted to get away from that Pox Walker corpse, they SHOULD spend some time healing themselves. Cue twenty minutes of doctoring, with Edie taking care of her own wounds and Silas’s (as he failed his own roll). As they patched themselves up, there was a whine (from Silas) and the lights flickered as something happened deeper in the facility. Shortly thereafter, an announcement came from Ducrow over the steampunky “speaking tubes” intercom, asking the disposal team to get to the treatment area. Silas suggested they get over there to see what was what, and the pair managed to lock up Harker’s office behind them and stealthily make their way over to the treatment area. Beyond the big door, they found a poorly-lit corridor, lined with dark rooms all labeled with Greek letters (alpha, beta, gamma, etc), with two brightly-lit rooms at the very end. As they entered, two people in white boiler suits came out of one of the lit rooms, dragging a gurney with them – fortunately they didn’t see the pair, but instead headed in the opposite direction, out a pair of double doors at the far end of the corridor, which ended in a T-section. Silas decided to peek into one of the dark rooms, and found nothing inside except some medical equipment that hadn’t been used in a LONG while to judge from all the dust. Traveling down the corridor revealed most of the other rooms were the same way, filled with various discredited medical items – and yes, discredited in the time period of the actual GAME. People in the Weird West might believe in the curative powers of cocaine, but they have figured out phrenology is a quack. XD Edie commented that this place may not really be about MEDICINE – Silas asked if it was the horrible plague zombie that tipped her off. XD
Any further banter, however, was cut off by the arrival of two orderlies, wheeling along a gurney containing one Senator Waxman! Fortunately, Edie and Silas managed to get into cover in one of the empty rooms in time (Silas just BARELY, thanks to a middling roll), and they were able to overhear the orderlies assuring Waxman that he would be fine in five minutes, and that this would be the best ten thousand dollars he ever spent. They then took him into one of the well-lit rooms – Silas decided to go sneak up and take a peek in through the observation window, with Edie following. He did good on the Sneaking roll, but failed the Notice roll, so opening the observation shutter knocked his hat over his eyes. XD Edie, however, picked up the Noticing slack, and saw that the room beyond had a very curious contraption in it – a pair of glass tubes with padded backs, connected at the top by a flexible hose, with one currently empty and an absolutely wretched man in the other, utterly wracked with disease and seemingly barely conscious. The orderlies got Waxman into the other tube and pulled a lever –
And cue the lights flickering and some absolutely godawful screaming coming from the poor pox-riddled man. I KNEW they were basically sucking the disease out of their clients and putting them into the poor townsfolk! Edie confirmed this, and said she wasn’t sure what they could do for the poor man in the tube, other than find Ducrow and bring her to a swift end. . .
But in the end, neither she nor Silas could stand around and do nothing about this. Edie checked out the orderlies with a pair of Notice rolls – first to determine if they were armed in any way (no), and second, with a mirror, to determine if they too were Pox Walkers (also no, whew). She and Silas thus burst in and attempted to smack them over the head with a large heavy bowl and a bedpan respectively –
But both of them failed the “Fightin’” roll, so they ended up basically high-fiving with their respective implements. The orderlies WERE surprised, at least, and not looking for a fight, so Edie promptly demanded that they stop the procedure before it completed, with Silas demanding that they listen to her. This, unfortunately, turned the roll from “Persuasion” into “Intimidation,” a skill Edie did NOT have, and with her penalty she ended up rolling a two. Fortunately one orderly rolled a one and was intimidated anyway – the other stood his ground, even when Silas tried his own Intimidation roll (turns out he’s not skilled in it either). Edie quickly switched tactics, trying a few kind words and saying it was for their own good to stop the procedure – THIS allowed her to use her much-better Persuasion AND her “Attractive” edge, charming the man, who decided he liked the look of her and allowed his frightened companion to pull the lever to stop things. Ended it with Senator Waxman complaining that they weren’t finished and he still had his bloody (literally) cough – we’ll see how Edie and Silas respond to that tomorrow!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though I had to do it fucking twice after I accidentally cut the power to the bedrooms by using my blow dryer to dry my hair at the same time Mom was using hers to warm up her and Dad’s bed, and when I got my computer back on, LibreWriter acted like I hadn’t saved anything when I KNOW I did. >( Anyway – Alice has finished her conversation with Officer Chunk (including learning his name) and has made her way up to LaCroix’s lavish penthouse office (after complaining in her head to Wonderland about how hard it is to drag any bit of information out of her fellow vampires during the elevator ride up). Time for her to report on her success in Santa Monica and get her next mission!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – despite tripping the circuit breaker, I was able to get through my GrayStillPlays video of the day – “$1 vs $1,000 Mega Ramp in GTA 5!” Or, rather, $1 vs $10 vs $100 vs $1,000 ramps, because it would be a little weird to have just two. :p As in the classic days of Gray buying boards off Fiverr (which, I remind everyone, is how he met Alex in the first place), Gray paid four people increasing amounts of money to build him ramp challenges, then demonstrated them sequentially. Here’s how that went –
I. $1 Ramp Challenge, by Sawsage – an appropriately janky challenge for the cheapest level, this one had random ramps lying and floating all over the place, a bunch of cars scattered on the rooftop, a hidden boost meant to troll Gray, a very uneven ramp made out of ramps, and a small checkpoint not quite aligned at the end – it was small because Sawsage didn’t know how to make it bigger. Interestingly enough, that lack of knowledge actually provided Gray with a genuine challenge, as he had to figure out exactly how fast and at what angle he had to come off the ramp to actually hit the smaller checkpoint. Took him a couple of tries, but he got it with the pink off-roader!
II. $10 Ramp Challenge, by Tim V – a farm-themed challenge, with a ramp made out of bundles of hay (and with a cow that occasionally spawned on it, much to Gray’s shock and surprise), that led into a barn fronted with breakaway walls. Gray basically had to come off the ramp, break through the walls, then thumbnail hole through the top of the barn into the checkpoint. He insisted on trying the ever-mocked Sherp provided to him first, just to see if it would get anywhere (it could make it to the very EDGE of the barn, but no farther), but – after some time spent smashing apart the boards – got through with the yellow spoiler car. Nice.
III. $100 Ramp Challenge (Tightrope Thumbnail Mega Ramp), by HNDLTN – this is where the challenges started getting really serious. Gray had to go down a pretty damn steep ramp, dodging the various bumps and ridges HNDLTN had put on the platforms, then jump off the end and through the top of one of the fancier buildings, avoiding a windmill right in front of it, then come out the other side onto a platform surrounded by fireworks, where he could use another boosted ramp to reach the checkpoint. Gray insisted on completing the initial ramp with the bright pink tractor trailer cab with the giant pointy plow on it (just to see if he COULD – it was rough, but he did it), then started trying serious cars. One car not only practically flew off the ramp the first time he tried it, but nearly went OVER the building instead – Gray tried to see if that was a viable way to complete the challenge, but discovered there was a partially-invisible wall there (partially because it pulsed into visibility every so often – Gray just hadn’t been sure if it was always SOLID), so he swapped cars and tried again. Turns out the banana yellow super car with the “TIGHT FIT” license plate could JUST get through if Gray banked it the right way! Pretty clever stuff there!
IV. $1,000 Ramp Challenge (Carousel Ramp), by Alex AKA Satan – “It only takes 32 seconds, how hard can it be?” Oh, pretty bad. . . But yes, we couldn’t have a GTA V video without Alex demonstrating one of his classic Torture Boards, and this one was very interesting indeed. For what Alex built was not one ramp, but FOUR, which all rotated around the top of a building at set intervals. So while Gray was going down one ramp, it would suddenly teleport out from under him, and another ramp would teleport in. Only one – the pink ramp – actually had the proper “ramp” bit at the end that would let Gray go through the winning circle, so Gray had to time this right so he got that ramp at the end of his descent, and all of the ramps had various challenges on them that Gray had to complete in order to make it down. In order, Gray had to start on the first yellow ramp, avoid the line of three green mini-ramps and the rotating circle of red mini-ramps, but make sure to HIT the purple mini-ramp so that – when the purple ramp teleported in right afterward – he could jump the gap Alex had put into the middle of it. Then, on the purple ramp, he had to do the yellow LOOP-DE-LOOP Alex had put on it and get shoved into the corridor on the far left side – so when the SECOND yellow ramp teleported in, he was on the green tightrope Alex had left there for him. THEN, on the second yellow ramp, he had to weave back over to the right to get onto the right-side white tightrope (the left-side one was fake), then swerve back left as FAST as possible to get on the far-left-side red tightrope, where – if he’d timed everything right and was going fast enough – when the pink ramp teleported in, he’d be on the partial green tightrope that led to the actual curve upward that would launch him into the win. *whew* Gray called this one of the most torturous ramp boards he’d ever done, but he DID indeed do it! Because he’s Gray and he never gives up. XD Good times – always fun to get a little fresh new blood in the Gray Torture Pool! Though, of course, nobody does it like Alex. :p
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only had to worry about the Victor Luvs Alice queue today, and I remembered to drop the queue speed back down to one post per today for tomorrow’s post about Duskwall slang. I’d HOPED to try and get some more stuff in the queue as well, but – well. See the part where I accidentally tripped the circuit breaker by daring to use my blow dryer at the same time as Mom, and then had to redo my editing on today’s LB:DQ chunk. Though I did at least get another Not-Incorrect Quote scene done for the next collection of Valicer In The Dark Not-Incorrect Quotes. . . *sigh* Something! I also briefly stopped by my Valice Multiverse blog to check on my messages with Marie, and it looks like I have an idea for her birthday fic, yay. :) Maybe I can crack that out tomorrow as I’m between chapters on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of!”
So -- yeah. Between almost freezing my ass off at work and the circuit breaker incident this evening, I am in a Mood. Which isn't helped by the fact that I strongly suspect at this point I'm also PMSing. *heavy sigh* And now I'm late getting to bed, which -- yeah. Here's hoping Thursday is better. Night all.
