Cooler And Less Of A Clusterfuck Thursday
Yes, I am happy to report that today was not only MUCH cooler (seriously, the temperature just went off the side of a fucking cliff, it was like 70 for a high -- if also rainy, so you couldn't enjoy it THAT much), it was also much calmer, as my write-up should attest to --
Work – Happy to report that today was a much less stressful day than yesterday! The issue with that one anonymous donor’s check was resolved this morning after a talk with my supervisor (and he even called the lady who’s been calling us to explain what happened), and I spent most of the rest of the day working on the obituaries and the related roster maintenance tasks those always bring, broken up by updating a few people’s credit cards on their pledges/ongoing gifts and posting a gift that came in as a direct ACH deposit into our bank account (as per Fiscal). And also we had a little birthday celebration for the assistant director, meaning I got a cupcake to have with my lunch (though I didn’t like it as much as I thought I might – it tasted fine, but it was REALLY soft, meaning it was kind of hard to pick up and eat. I prefer my baked goods to have a touch more structural integrity!). And while there was yet another recital happening in the auditorium, the parking lot wasn’t swarming with dance moms and their kids this time, meaning I was able to get out normally. Whew. Let’s hope Friday is more of the same!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with James Turner because he uploaded a surprising video a couple of days ago: “Full renovation of Tiny Town! - Part 29!” Yes, after five months, James apparently suddenly remembered he’d never actually renovated the common areas of Tiny Town, like he’d promised, and actually got on that! I sincerely thought he’d gotten distracted by all the other stuff he was doing (the Black Widower challenge, updating the empty base game houses after the EAxis refresh of the occupied ones, doing his LPs of The Sims and The Sims 2 when the Legacy editions released, and of course diving into Businesses & Hobbies with another generation of Bigwallets) and that the series was just going to end with Silas’s final episode. But no, it seems he is determined to wrap this thing up properly. Hooray! :D Here’s what happened in the first half of the episode:
A) James reintroducing us viewers to Tiny Town and showing off all of the houses, because, well, it had been a while (to the point where he himself had to occasionally look up whose house was whose XD)
B) James being immediately stymied in his ambitions to renovate the lot because he’d left Tiny Town at the tail end of autumn, meaning there were leaves everywhere obscuring the paths he hoped to repaint. Figures, right? XD He initially considered just playing through the end of autumn and all of winter to get to spring and hopefully nicer weather, but then remembered “oh hey, I got the gang a weather machine to stop it raining constantly” and ended up having Pablo get the necessary Handiness (via making friendship bracelets) to upgrade it to skip the season ahead straight to summer! So all was well – even if James then had to come back to actually do the renovations the next day in real life (represented by a change in hoodie) because he’d used up all his playtime on the set-up. XD
C) James redoing the front of Pablo’s lot so it didn’t stick out into the path so much, using debug Horse Ranch items to give him a nice apocalyptic fence to help delineate better where the common spaces ended and his space began (and thus where the orange sands surrounding his bunker should extend to)
D) James using columns and spandrels, plus some shrunken-down street lamps merged into the columns, to create proper “entrances” to Tiny Town on either side of Reuben’s house
E) James also trimming down the size of the “patio” around Reuben’s house so it didn’t stick out so much, giving him more room for the painted-in path (and not making it look like there was an “alternate path” along the side of Reuben’s house – didn’t quite get that, but it’s James’s build, so what he says goes)
F) James repainting the paths leading into Tiny Town, going around Reuben’s house and into the town square, making them look muddier and dirtier so they matched the vibe of the world better (it IS located in the pastoral landscape of Henford-On-Bagley after all) and surrounding them with lots of pretty flowers, along with a couple of outdoor lanterns and benches
G) James taking the fun bird sculpture out of the big fountain in the middle of the square (aw); putting a fancy ironwork awning thing (which MIGHT be from the bistro-themed kit? Not entirely sure) over the picnic area (he actually did this mostly by accident – he was storing it there to see if he wanted to use it as an entrance thing, only to go “hey :D” when he saw it over the picnic table); and setting up a little temporary wedding area near Scarlett’s house with a nice arch and a bunch of benches and flowers (because he’s HOPING he can get her married to Patchy in the Grand Finale where he goes around and finishes off everyone’s business once and for all)
H) And James jazzing up the exterior of the town hall a bit with some extra trees, columns, and flowering shrubs, because it really did need it
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all! It is nice to see Tiny Town slowly but surely assuming its final form. :) I left off with him adding plants around the path that goes around the back of the town hall by Sunny’s private island (well, peninsula) – tomorrow, we’ll see how he wraps everything up! Probably with a makeover of the interior of the town hall, he was saying he wanted to move the basement gym at least...
2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I started Chapter 3 today, which is a temporary swap to Alice’s POV as she and Smiler wait by the servants’ entrance for Victor (or a duly-appointed representative) to show up with their reward! And Smiler, as it turned out, had a question for her while they were waiting – which was not “can I have the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench,” as she had assumed. No, the question was instead “can I move in with you?” Alice was surprised, but Smiler pointed out that it would be easier to move them to the alchemy bench than the alchemy bench to them, and that, while they knew she’d have Elder Gutknecht and the ravens to keep her company, they felt like she could use someone around the place that wasn’t a bird, a ghost, or the fevered imaginings of her own brain. They quickly stressed that it had nothing to do with them thinking she couldn’t take care of herself, though!
...cue Alice going, “actually, given some of the nonsense I’ve wandered into while hallucinating over the past month or so, I might NOT be able to take care of myself.” XD At any rate, she was perfectly happy to let Smiler move in with her, both to get some extra hands to help renovate the place and to keep getting Smiler’s tea in the mornings. XD They were just starting to discuss the logistics of the move (specifically, figuring out the bed situation) when someone went “Oi, pardon me” nearby – tomorrow, Kasimir Jones finally makes his appearance in this story, and Alice finds herself very suspicious of his presence...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got in two videos tonight, go me –
A) First up, we had “The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature Expansion Pack | Official Gameplay Trailer” by The Sims! Six and a half minutes of Mother Nature talking about all the new gameplay that comes with the pack – like taking care of the new not-just-decorative houseplants (or enchanting them with fairy dust so they can care for themselves); becoming a fairy and exploring what looks like a surprisingly complex tree of special abilities (not only do they have good, neutral, and evil paths, there’s also a whole tree just dedicated to customization!); living off the land as a Nature Nomad and leveling up your “Natural Living” skill; dealing with Luck and keeping yourself balanced – or suffering Ailments like “Gnome Lure” if you don’t; and becoming a Naturopath and healing people by learning the apothecary skill and brewing/compounding all sorts of interesting stuff. *nods* I have to say, this trailer made the pack look rather more interesting to me – like, I’m not SOLD sold, but I am intrigued by how many abilities fairies seem to have, and by all the stuff one can make on the apothecary bench. Plus it looks like there’s at least three new aspirations, which is nice, along with new traits and lots of cute CAS and Build/Buy stuff. I am now cautiously into this! Though, frankly, I’m mostly amused by the fact that the comments under the video are almost nothing but “justice for mermaids! And aliens and plantsims too, when we remember them.” XD EA, come on, just give us the refresh already – the community is NOT going to shut up about it.
B) And second up, we had “How Quickly Can You Become a Millionaire in Baldur's Gate 3?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! Which, as you might expect, was all about how long it took playtime-wise to earn one million gold in the game – WITHOUT using glitches, mods, or exploits, and on fucking Honor Mode, the hardest difficulty setting in the game! So, how long did it take Proxy to get his million with his high Strength high Charisma high-jumping Storm Sorcerer Dark Urge Mr. Monopoly and the few friends he picked up along the way?
Six hours and 42 minutes! Er, not counting all the prep and testing Proxy did beforehand. Including multiple saves where he died horribly. XD And how did he get all that money so quickly? Well, the strat boiled down to essentially:
I. Proxy speedrunning Acts I and II of the game, using his incredible jumping ability, a bunch of tricks he picked up from various speedrunning videos, his companions to do the more dangerous stuff (like actually fighting enemies), and the power of being a total jerk to NPCs to skip as much content as possible, only doing what was necessary to advance the story and his own goals (such as freeing Wulbren to get a particular vendor to spawn later, and picking up various Items Of Interest along the way)
II. Proxy making damn sure to recruit Minsc once he became available in Act III (he also attempted to murder the NPCs who had Minsc under their control, as they’d just done a bank heist and had 10,000 gold on them – unfortunately, the character CARRYING the gold proved to be immune to the deadly fireworks Mr. Monopoly and friends dropped on her head, thanks to the special ability “Evasion” (that totally negates all damage on a successful Dexterity save), and got away with the money, to Proxy’s annoyance)
III. Proxy then respeccing Minsc, who joins the party at level 12 no matter what (max level in the vanilla game) from a barbarian into a combination Thief Rogue/Trickery Domain Cleric (11 levels of the former, one of the latter) to gain access to “Reliable Talent,” a completely overpowered passive Rogues get at level 11 that makes the lowest roll they can get when using a skill they’re proficient in a ten – and then layering on all sorts of OTHER bonuses (from all the various items he picked up over the course of his speedy adventures, plus some class features) to make it so that, when pickpocketing, Minsc (when shapeshifted into a gnome, anyway, using the “Disguise Self” spell Trickery Domain Clerics get) cannot get less than a 30 – coincidentally, the highest DC check you can get when pickpocketing people
IV. Proxy then sending Minsc to rob three specific rich vendors in Baldur’s Gate over and over again, long-resting in between each attempt to reset their inventories, until Minsc got the million
Yeah – basically, while Proxy didn’t use any exploits to get the money itself, you could probably argue that he used some exploits to get TO the money. XD Though he wasn’t completely breaking physics either like some speedrunners, so… Either way, it was a very fun video, and I was frankly amazed at how he put together the “Minsc, The Best Pickpocket Ever” build. Proxy fucking knows his stuff when it comes to playing – and cheesing – Baldur’s Gate III!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I finished off my latest reblog of “Love Will Come To You” by Poets Of The Fall for Song Saturday (a song I have not featured on my blog for six years! Shameful), talking about how I still very much enjoyed this song, and how I’ve come up with a Valicer spin on it (with Smiler singing the first set of lyrics and chorus to Victor and Alice to cheer them up after a bad time, then Alice and Victor returning the favor to Smiler with the second set of lyrics). In fact, given the music video in my head, I seem to have come up with a specifically Valicer In The Dark spin on it...we’ll see if this song gets added to a certain YouTube playlist as a result later. :P
Valice Multiverse – And over here, since there was nothing else going on, I went ahead and just reblogged my post from Wednesday about what Victor, Alice, and Smiler would get if they encountered an ice cream truck into the queue. *shrug* I mean, they’re valid headcanons for the Inevitable High School AU and Cuddlepile AU versions of the trio, anyway!
*nods* Not too shabby -- though it took me longer than I would have liked to both watch and sum up Proxy's video. What can I say -- he talks fast in his videos, so it can be hard to keep up with him sometimes, and we all know my tendency toward wordiness in these write-ups! XD Ah well, it's all sorted now, and I should go hit the sheets to try and get some sleep. Just one more day to go! Night all!
Work – Happy to report that today was a much less stressful day than yesterday! The issue with that one anonymous donor’s check was resolved this morning after a talk with my supervisor (and he even called the lady who’s been calling us to explain what happened), and I spent most of the rest of the day working on the obituaries and the related roster maintenance tasks those always bring, broken up by updating a few people’s credit cards on their pledges/ongoing gifts and posting a gift that came in as a direct ACH deposit into our bank account (as per Fiscal). And also we had a little birthday celebration for the assistant director, meaning I got a cupcake to have with my lunch (though I didn’t like it as much as I thought I might – it tasted fine, but it was REALLY soft, meaning it was kind of hard to pick up and eat. I prefer my baked goods to have a touch more structural integrity!). And while there was yet another recital happening in the auditorium, the parking lot wasn’t swarming with dance moms and their kids this time, meaning I was able to get out normally. Whew. Let’s hope Friday is more of the same!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with James Turner because he uploaded a surprising video a couple of days ago: “Full renovation of Tiny Town! - Part 29!” Yes, after five months, James apparently suddenly remembered he’d never actually renovated the common areas of Tiny Town, like he’d promised, and actually got on that! I sincerely thought he’d gotten distracted by all the other stuff he was doing (the Black Widower challenge, updating the empty base game houses after the EAxis refresh of the occupied ones, doing his LPs of The Sims and The Sims 2 when the Legacy editions released, and of course diving into Businesses & Hobbies with another generation of Bigwallets) and that the series was just going to end with Silas’s final episode. But no, it seems he is determined to wrap this thing up properly. Hooray! :D Here’s what happened in the first half of the episode:
A) James reintroducing us viewers to Tiny Town and showing off all of the houses, because, well, it had been a while (to the point where he himself had to occasionally look up whose house was whose XD)
B) James being immediately stymied in his ambitions to renovate the lot because he’d left Tiny Town at the tail end of autumn, meaning there were leaves everywhere obscuring the paths he hoped to repaint. Figures, right? XD He initially considered just playing through the end of autumn and all of winter to get to spring and hopefully nicer weather, but then remembered “oh hey, I got the gang a weather machine to stop it raining constantly” and ended up having Pablo get the necessary Handiness (via making friendship bracelets) to upgrade it to skip the season ahead straight to summer! So all was well – even if James then had to come back to actually do the renovations the next day in real life (represented by a change in hoodie) because he’d used up all his playtime on the set-up. XD
C) James redoing the front of Pablo’s lot so it didn’t stick out into the path so much, using debug Horse Ranch items to give him a nice apocalyptic fence to help delineate better where the common spaces ended and his space began (and thus where the orange sands surrounding his bunker should extend to)
D) James using columns and spandrels, plus some shrunken-down street lamps merged into the columns, to create proper “entrances” to Tiny Town on either side of Reuben’s house
E) James also trimming down the size of the “patio” around Reuben’s house so it didn’t stick out so much, giving him more room for the painted-in path (and not making it look like there was an “alternate path” along the side of Reuben’s house – didn’t quite get that, but it’s James’s build, so what he says goes)
F) James repainting the paths leading into Tiny Town, going around Reuben’s house and into the town square, making them look muddier and dirtier so they matched the vibe of the world better (it IS located in the pastoral landscape of Henford-On-Bagley after all) and surrounding them with lots of pretty flowers, along with a couple of outdoor lanterns and benches
G) James taking the fun bird sculpture out of the big fountain in the middle of the square (aw); putting a fancy ironwork awning thing (which MIGHT be from the bistro-themed kit? Not entirely sure) over the picnic area (he actually did this mostly by accident – he was storing it there to see if he wanted to use it as an entrance thing, only to go “hey :D” when he saw it over the picnic table); and setting up a little temporary wedding area near Scarlett’s house with a nice arch and a bunch of benches and flowers (because he’s HOPING he can get her married to Patchy in the Grand Finale where he goes around and finishes off everyone’s business once and for all)
H) And James jazzing up the exterior of the town hall a bit with some extra trees, columns, and flowering shrubs, because it really did need it
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all! It is nice to see Tiny Town slowly but surely assuming its final form. :) I left off with him adding plants around the path that goes around the back of the town hall by Sunny’s private island (well, peninsula) – tomorrow, we’ll see how he wraps everything up! Probably with a makeover of the interior of the town hall, he was saying he wanted to move the basement gym at least...
2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I started Chapter 3 today, which is a temporary swap to Alice’s POV as she and Smiler wait by the servants’ entrance for Victor (or a duly-appointed representative) to show up with their reward! And Smiler, as it turned out, had a question for her while they were waiting – which was not “can I have the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench,” as she had assumed. No, the question was instead “can I move in with you?” Alice was surprised, but Smiler pointed out that it would be easier to move them to the alchemy bench than the alchemy bench to them, and that, while they knew she’d have Elder Gutknecht and the ravens to keep her company, they felt like she could use someone around the place that wasn’t a bird, a ghost, or the fevered imaginings of her own brain. They quickly stressed that it had nothing to do with them thinking she couldn’t take care of herself, though!
...cue Alice going, “actually, given some of the nonsense I’ve wandered into while hallucinating over the past month or so, I might NOT be able to take care of myself.” XD At any rate, she was perfectly happy to let Smiler move in with her, both to get some extra hands to help renovate the place and to keep getting Smiler’s tea in the mornings. XD They were just starting to discuss the logistics of the move (specifically, figuring out the bed situation) when someone went “Oi, pardon me” nearby – tomorrow, Kasimir Jones finally makes his appearance in this story, and Alice finds herself very suspicious of his presence...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got in two videos tonight, go me –
A) First up, we had “The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature Expansion Pack | Official Gameplay Trailer” by The Sims! Six and a half minutes of Mother Nature talking about all the new gameplay that comes with the pack – like taking care of the new not-just-decorative houseplants (or enchanting them with fairy dust so they can care for themselves); becoming a fairy and exploring what looks like a surprisingly complex tree of special abilities (not only do they have good, neutral, and evil paths, there’s also a whole tree just dedicated to customization!); living off the land as a Nature Nomad and leveling up your “Natural Living” skill; dealing with Luck and keeping yourself balanced – or suffering Ailments like “Gnome Lure” if you don’t; and becoming a Naturopath and healing people by learning the apothecary skill and brewing/compounding all sorts of interesting stuff. *nods* I have to say, this trailer made the pack look rather more interesting to me – like, I’m not SOLD sold, but I am intrigued by how many abilities fairies seem to have, and by all the stuff one can make on the apothecary bench. Plus it looks like there’s at least three new aspirations, which is nice, along with new traits and lots of cute CAS and Build/Buy stuff. I am now cautiously into this! Though, frankly, I’m mostly amused by the fact that the comments under the video are almost nothing but “justice for mermaids! And aliens and plantsims too, when we remember them.” XD EA, come on, just give us the refresh already – the community is NOT going to shut up about it.
B) And second up, we had “How Quickly Can You Become a Millionaire in Baldur's Gate 3?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! Which, as you might expect, was all about how long it took playtime-wise to earn one million gold in the game – WITHOUT using glitches, mods, or exploits, and on fucking Honor Mode, the hardest difficulty setting in the game! So, how long did it take Proxy to get his million with his high Strength high Charisma high-jumping Storm Sorcerer Dark Urge Mr. Monopoly and the few friends he picked up along the way?
Six hours and 42 minutes! Er, not counting all the prep and testing Proxy did beforehand. Including multiple saves where he died horribly. XD And how did he get all that money so quickly? Well, the strat boiled down to essentially:
I. Proxy speedrunning Acts I and II of the game, using his incredible jumping ability, a bunch of tricks he picked up from various speedrunning videos, his companions to do the more dangerous stuff (like actually fighting enemies), and the power of being a total jerk to NPCs to skip as much content as possible, only doing what was necessary to advance the story and his own goals (such as freeing Wulbren to get a particular vendor to spawn later, and picking up various Items Of Interest along the way)
II. Proxy making damn sure to recruit Minsc once he became available in Act III (he also attempted to murder the NPCs who had Minsc under their control, as they’d just done a bank heist and had 10,000 gold on them – unfortunately, the character CARRYING the gold proved to be immune to the deadly fireworks Mr. Monopoly and friends dropped on her head, thanks to the special ability “Evasion” (that totally negates all damage on a successful Dexterity save), and got away with the money, to Proxy’s annoyance)
III. Proxy then respeccing Minsc, who joins the party at level 12 no matter what (max level in the vanilla game) from a barbarian into a combination Thief Rogue/Trickery Domain Cleric (11 levels of the former, one of the latter) to gain access to “Reliable Talent,” a completely overpowered passive Rogues get at level 11 that makes the lowest roll they can get when using a skill they’re proficient in a ten – and then layering on all sorts of OTHER bonuses (from all the various items he picked up over the course of his speedy adventures, plus some class features) to make it so that, when pickpocketing, Minsc (when shapeshifted into a gnome, anyway, using the “Disguise Self” spell Trickery Domain Clerics get) cannot get less than a 30 – coincidentally, the highest DC check you can get when pickpocketing people
IV. Proxy then sending Minsc to rob three specific rich vendors in Baldur’s Gate over and over again, long-resting in between each attempt to reset their inventories, until Minsc got the million
Yeah – basically, while Proxy didn’t use any exploits to get the money itself, you could probably argue that he used some exploits to get TO the money. XD Though he wasn’t completely breaking physics either like some speedrunners, so… Either way, it was a very fun video, and I was frankly amazed at how he put together the “Minsc, The Best Pickpocket Ever” build. Proxy fucking knows his stuff when it comes to playing – and cheesing – Baldur’s Gate III!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I finished off my latest reblog of “Love Will Come To You” by Poets Of The Fall for Song Saturday (a song I have not featured on my blog for six years! Shameful), talking about how I still very much enjoyed this song, and how I’ve come up with a Valicer spin on it (with Smiler singing the first set of lyrics and chorus to Victor and Alice to cheer them up after a bad time, then Alice and Victor returning the favor to Smiler with the second set of lyrics). In fact, given the music video in my head, I seem to have come up with a specifically Valicer In The Dark spin on it...we’ll see if this song gets added to a certain YouTube playlist as a result later. :P
Valice Multiverse – And over here, since there was nothing else going on, I went ahead and just reblogged my post from Wednesday about what Victor, Alice, and Smiler would get if they encountered an ice cream truck into the queue. *shrug* I mean, they’re valid headcanons for the Inevitable High School AU and Cuddlepile AU versions of the trio, anyway!
*nods* Not too shabby -- though it took me longer than I would have liked to both watch and sum up Proxy's video. What can I say -- he talks fast in his videos, so it can be hard to keep up with him sometimes, and we all know my tendency toward wordiness in these write-ups! XD Ah well, it's all sorted now, and I should go hit the sheets to try and get some sleep. Just one more day to go! Night all!