Annoyingly Busy Thursday

As my write-up will attest to:

Work – It was a very frustrating day at work, I’m sad to say, consisting of:
A) My coworker having to deal with an error that the credit card people INSISTED we wouldn’t get again right at the start of the day, leading to me having to e-mail them again to say “Hey, what gives” (and then to say “the gift in question is in this batch, as per my previous e-mail”)
B) Me then spending most of the rest of the morning writing up a long summary of all the issues we’ve had with our credit card company at my supervisor’s behest, which involved a lot of looking up things and referencing old e-mails and the like, all while dealing with quite a few phone calls (including more credit card gifts – fortunately every one after the first went through successfully)
C) Me then ATTEMPTING to spend the afternoon working on a QC file for the latest thank you going out (double-checking multiple gifts on people’s records), only to keep getting interrupted by either more phone calls (like people looking for tax letters, or asking to be taken off the mailing list, or changing their parish, or…) or my coworker needing me to look something up for her, meaning I didn’t get through much of it…but discovering four gifts meant for our NEWSPAPER office (people paying for their subscriptions) in said QC file in the bit I did get through
Yeah, it was – it was a lot. I mean, it may not seem like a lot from that write-up, but trust me – in that office, dealing with the phone ringing so often while trying so hard to get that summary sorted and that file done? It was a LOT. *sigh* Hoping tomorrow is a better day – at least it’s the end of the work week, so it’s got that going for it!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s pedal session on the bike took me through:
A) The end of “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” And the final chunklet of The Amnesiac Adventures Of Ms. Blue the dwarf (Jane), Mr. White the Goliath (Mike), and Mr. Brown/Bron Harfoot the human (Andy) featured –
I. The rest of the battle between Blue, White, and Bron and the battle mages of Skinner Rabbit! And let me tell you, our trio acquitted themselves admirably:
a. I picked up with Bron’s turn – which he chose to hold until Right-Hand Battle Mage (who, remember, he had Slowed) had taken his, wanting to see if he’d do another Magic Missile after having his first Counterspelled by Blue. Right-Hand did indeed prepare another seven darts of never-misses pain, which began proceeding very slowly in the direction of Bron –
And then Bron went up to Right Hand, picked him up, put him in the path of his own Magic Missiles, and canceled Slow. Leading to the guy getting absolutely pummeled by his own high-level spell. XD Didn’t kill him, amazingly, but he was NOT in a good way.
b. Blue went next and decided that it was time to put poor Left-Hand Battle Mage (who, if you recall, had been Frightened, Held, and then hit with two beams of Agonizing Blast) out of his misery and cast her final spell upon him – which turned out to be Mind Spike! She thus shoved a 20-damage bolt of psychic ow into the man’s brain – Luke was like “do you want to KILL him, or just knock him unconscious?” –
And Jane was like “Well, I know I’m supposed to be part of the City Watch, but from what little I remember, I’ve already accepted a large bribe, so my reputation is already ruined...plus I have no loyalty to Skinner...and I’m pretty sure I can’t actually control if a Mind Spike kills or not. So yeah, kill him.” XD Yeah, sure, ask the woman who played PRUDENCE for years and years if she wants to spare a foe…
c. With Left-Hand Guard dead, Bonesly got to go, and did something in the big old Stinking Cloud that Bron had conjured – we weren’t privy to what it was, but he got a nat 20 on it! White, on his turn, thusly ran up to the cloud to see what he could see, and spotted two figures standing and one lying on the ground. One he could tell was Bonesly, as it looked more skeletal, but he had no idea if the one on the ground was Skinner or Emily…
So he went “fuck it, I want another skeleton” and summoned another one! Bonesly Mk. II or Bonesly Jr., depending on if you asked Mike or Andy. XD Luke noted that Summon Undead was a concentration spell, but allowed it because it was cool (and because, as Andy argued, without his memories, White had a lot more space for concentrating on spells). White had the new skeleton erupt behind the standing figure and grab them, figuring that if it was Emily, that was fine, she was just grappled, and if it was Skinner, he’d then be at a disadvantage. *nods* Smart.
d. And Bron finished off the fight by taking out the Right-Hand Battle Mage with another Thunderwave – though he actually proved to be more merciful than Blue and just knocked the guy out against the side of the church. It was a very painful knocking out, sure, but – dude would live, at least.
( It )

B) And the very beginning of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Man With The Platinum Chip” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! A one-shot he did seven years ago, around the time Fallout 76 was coming out I believe, which saw him take one of those “adjust the difficulty” mods for Fallout: New Vegas and tinker with it to turn up the damage everyone – NPCs and his character – was doing by 10,000%. Basically, if you got shot at all, unless you were very lucky, you were dead. Apparently this nonsense was inspired by the “Man With A Golden Gun” mode in GoldenEye 007’s multiplayer mode (where there’s a single golden gun that can kill in one shot that the players can try to acquire – and once it’s claimed, the only way to get it is to kill the current owner, as per Wikipedia), so naturally his Courier was named Bames Jond. XD Jon’s aim was to show off how this affected the various gun battles that can occur in the game and see how chaotic things got – the chunk I got through today covered how the extra damage affected “Ghost Town Gunfight!” And, thanks to a reload, we got to see two distinct outcomes –
I. If Bames Jond did get involved, Goodsprings won, but with heavy casualties – both Ringo and Sunny Smiles ended up dead, though Trudy and Cheyenne (Sunny’s dog) both managed to survive. Bames himself just barely survived the fight, with his leather armor actually allowing him to take a hit without immediately dying even WITH the damage boost. Jon, who had thought armor was going to be absolutely useless during this whole one-shot, was surprised
II. And if Bames didn’t get involved? Well, in that case, the Powder Gangers won (managing to overwhelm the citizenry by coming in as a big pack, essentially), but also with heavy casualties – only two Powder Gangers survived the whole mess. And – unfortunately for Bames, who thought he could just waltz on out of there so long as he had the right clothes on – they were not fooled by his disguise taken off the corpse of their fallen friend. XD
Interesting stuff indeed! I’m glad that I spotted it in my Recommendeds. :) I left off with Bames heading toward the NCRCF, ready to cause some chaos there – tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes, and what other ridiculous fights he gets into over the rest of the one-shot!

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – started the home stretch of this chapter today, getting past a scene break and covering:
A) Van and Terrence having a whispered argument about who should open the door to LaCroix’s office when neither of them wanted to do it; Alice interrupting to point out somebody had to do it; and Mercurio immediately going “Not it” and that if he had his way, he’d already be in the next state over. XD Van was like “yeah, so would we” and started grousing about how it was bad enough that the Anarchs stopped the plague before they could, while Terrence added that LaCroix was likely already in a bad mood thanks to all the stuff with Grout – apparently he’d been having a “serious discussion” with the primogen before they left. Alice had to ask if LaCroix was ever in a good mood, allowing that she hadn’t seen him in person that often, but that he didn’t seem very chill; Van mused that he thought he’d seen LaCroix smile once, while Terrence explained that LaCroix was stuck with a very shitty gig here, trying to establish a Camarilla presence in the Anarch Free States and getting his authority undermined by unsanctioned Embraces (“No offense” “None taken, I didn’t want to be part of this bullshit anyway”)
B) The door opening apparently of its own accord right as Alice resolved to do it, revealing the Sheriff on the side – Van and Terrence immediately started quailing, while a resigned Mercurio greeted him with a “hey, big guy” and asked if the prince was in. The Sheriff nodded and let them in, revealing that LaCroix was standing by his office windows, gazing out at the city in an apparently melancholy mood – cue the boys immediately letting Alice take point, making her roll her eyes XD
C) And Alice making an effort to greet LaCroix a little more politely this night, only to be hit with a speech about the “folly of leadership” and how as Prince he wears “the albatross and a bullseye.” Carpenter pronounced it short but stirring, while Alice sarcastically noted “what a surprise, you enjoying his whining.”
Not a bad start, I feel! I left off with Alice noting it sounded like LaCroix had had a night and asking if he’d made a certain decision – tomorrow, she learns that the Blood Hunt for Nines Rodriguez is on, and LaCroix learns he is not getting a certain sarcophagus...

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, surprisingly – mostly because I spotted a Short that intrigued me in my Recommendeds and chose to watch it before getting down to the important business of spending most of my night summing up my workout videos. :p Said short was “Warlock’s patron takes the wheel #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO, and covered what happens when a warlock (any patron) encounters Queen Vlaakith CLVII in the githyanki creche you can find near the end of Act I – basically, their patron grabs their eyes for a minute to size up the Lich Queen Of The Githyanki, notes she’s “not quite a god, but not far off,” then recoils, leaving a single word of advice – “Caution.” As someone who is now very fond of warlocks thanks to not only loving Prudence’s whole deal in the original Oxventure, but happily embracing my Tav!Smiler being one, I approve of this unique interaction. :D Looking forward to when it happens with Smiler!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – I didn’t get anything done on Valice Multiverse (there WAS an ask there, but I’m not sure I want to answer it, it’s not a particularly fun one), but I did reblog two things on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler):
A) A thread talking about a “citizens petition” to the FDA to regulate estrogen more and force patients to be put on a registry...thus creating a list of trans women for the current administration to bully; fortunately the thread included a link to a place where you could leave comments and object to this practice
B) And a post by my friend thesatiricaldemon talking about a new fanfic he’s writing crossing over The SCP Foundation and the Fate series of games! Dunno if I’ll be READING it, as I don’t know anything about those games, but I like to promote my friends. :)
So that was all right, I suppose!

And now I will be going to bed, as it's been a long day and I need my sleep. Night all!