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Busy Tuesday Evening
Mar. 24th, 2026 11:48 pmYeah, time seems to have gotten away from me today, so let's dive right into the write-up, shall we?
Work – I must report that today was a pretty damn “meh” day at work. On the plus side:
-->The phone calls have finally calmed down, meaning we can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes looking things up for people – I just had to update some parish relationships and call back a guy looking to update his recurring gift today
-->I was able to confirm to a guy who called yesterday that a gift had been posted today, which was nice
-->I got a very nice e-mail from a lady who I’d e-mailed about having both a pledge and recurring gift (people sometimes think they’re the same thing, which they are not, leading to them having two credit card charges when they try to “renew” their gift), thanking me for letting her know and choosing to keep the recurring gift
-->And I was able to start making a bit of progress toward clearing up some other issues, such as taking off the gifts that were actually meant for the newspaper office (which involves sending a memo to Fiscal so we can issue said office a check for the misattributed gifts)
On the minus side, however:
-->I also had to tell two people who’d called earlier looking for their gifts that no, said gifts had NOT shown up yet, I’m sorry (one guy is sending in a replacement, while the other woman is going to check with her parish and see if they still have it)
-->The credit card people never got back to us about the gift we had problems with yesterday, and when I tried to set it up again (before calling the guy back, as I didn’t want to waste his time if it went wrong), I got the same error, which is annoying
-->And I discovered that the damn issue of pledge payments not being posted if they’re charged on the same day the pledge is made is STILL PRESENT. Meaning I spent most of the day researching that to get a list of missed payments. >( And even worse? While checking all the credit card pledges our processors have posted recently, I found that the one payment that should have been excluded as a duplicate (a down payment on a pledge made in the same batch) was very nearly double-posted! Fortunately our database people caught that one before it actually happened, but – cripes, does it piss me off that the LEGIT ones are being suppressed while THAT one nearly slipped through!
So yes – very “meh.” *shakehead* We’ll see how things shake out tomorrow – I’ve got the check-in call with the credit card people in the afternoon, not that I expect anything to come of it...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – and I chose to stick with Jon of Many A True Nerd for today’s session on the bike, as I’d seen something else I wanted to watch on his channel while bringing yesterday’s F:NV YOLO Remastered video. Accordingly, I spent my workout pedaling my way through roughly the first half of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Low XP Challenge!” A special one-off video Jon did six years ago to answer a very interesting question: What’s the lowest amount of XP one can earn playing New Vegas while still beating the game? His attempt to find out has so far featured –
A) The creation of Jo, the Perpetually Surprised Courier! A woman who has:
I. 10 Strength, 1 Perception, 10 Endurance, 1 Charisma, 10 Intelligence, 7 Agility, and 1 Luck as her SPECIAL stats (because passing skill checks is forbidden in this run – those give XP, after all – Jon decided the best thing to do was to set her up so she could both easily punch to death everything in her way, and easily take a hit or two)
II. Melee Weapons, Unarmed, and Barter as her tagged skills (because Jon wasn’t sure if she was going to handle her fights with melee weapons or unarmed ones, and because she was going to have to do a lot of buying and selling, so she might as well get better prices while doing so)
III. And Skilled (which immediately adds +5 to all skills but lowers experience gained by -10%) and Heavy Handed (which makes all melee and unarmed attacks do 20% more base damage at the cost of less critical hit damage) as her traits (because the first trait was essential to lowering the amount of XP she received during the game, and the second would just help keep her alive)
Easily one of Jon’s odder characters, to be sure – at least she got a somewhat normal name, I suppose. XD
( We always need a cut for these )
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another page done on this tonight, covering –
A) Skelter recovering from Alice getting quite into his personal space while reminding everyone that LaCroix has Dominate (hence why she couldn’t try to warn Nines earlier) and that she wouldn’t have minded at ALL if Nines killed Grout, then asking a nearby vampire named Rob to verify if Alice was telling the truth or not, since he seemed to have a sixth sense about these things – cue a fictional vampire version of Rob Brydon from “Would I Lie To You?” confirming that Alice was telling the truth; a fictional vampire version of Lee Mack stating that even if she wasn’t, he wasn’t going to be the one to confront her; and a fictional vampire version of David Mitchell complaining that Lee never seems to find him scary when he gets mad. Causing Lee to inform David that that’s because he’s hilarious when he gets mad (which he is), and Rob to try and defuse the argument. And then David and Lee to start arguing about Lee’s claim that he can smell a dead fly across the room (a reference to a particularly ridiculous lie the showrunners gave Lee once in the “Quick Fire Lies” round). XD I know this is going to probably make a lot of people go “???” but fuck it, I love WILTY and I want to add the boys into my fic. I already put in the vampire version of Ed Sheeran from his “Bad Habits” music video!
B) Skelter telling Alice after all that that he’s willing to accept she might have been a patsy, but he’s watching her – Alice said that was fair, and confirmed with him that Nines got out of the city well ahead of the Blood Hunt (Skelter explaining they overheard some “Cammy fucks” discussing Nines murdering Grout and bundled him out of there). She was quite glad to hear that Nines wasn’t going to be immediately murdered, at least!
C) Damsel, still pissed off with Alice, telling her that she should consider herself really lucky that Nines got out in time, and asking what the hell she’d even done for them lately – cue Alice telling her about killing Pisha, startling our favorite bereted bitch out of her bad mood for a few seconds. XD Alice’s description of the Nagaraja’s death (stumbling into her own mystical fire and needing a couple of mercy shots to the head) made the entire bar shudder, and Skelter wondered how the hell Alice kept even finding this shit –
Cue Alice going “Rabbit keeps running off and forcing me to chase him.” XD I left off with Skelter suggesting she try “ignoring the fucking hallucinations for five minutes” and Damsel demanding any information she might have on LaCroix – tomorrow, we’ll pick up with Alice telling them all about her upcoming trip to Hollywood to find Gary!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – before diving into the Workout Video Write-Up above, I made sure to get in one YouTube Short that I saw in my Recommendeds and found intriguing: “The Great Old One Warlock's best reaction in Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream! A little video showcasing how GOO Warlocks get some special dialogue when they come across a strange hole in the wall with disturbing tendrils coming out of it in what I believe is Moonrise Towers in Act 2! First, upon encountering the hole (which is actually a trap laid by the Absolute, the Big Bad of the game, hoping to grab the player character for a little chat should they be dumb enough to stick their hand in), a GOO Warlock will note that, whatever this thing is, it excites their patron. And when they stick their hand in the hole and feel something grab it, they can choose to “Invite the presence in. There’s always room for one more.” Leading to the Warlock being pulled into a strange void, surrounded by Elder Brain tentacles as the Artefact works overtime trying to keep them safe from the Absolute’s influence during the aforementioned chat –
And, in this particular video, to “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing as the eldritch vibes roll. XD It was very funny – I’m glad I took a few minutes to watch it! *quietly notes down another thing for Smiler to try once they’re at the correct part of the game...*
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Eh, check, but I didn’t get as much done here as I might have hoped thanks to the Workout Video Write-Up taking up so much of my time. But I did get one thing into the queue for tomorrow on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (Valice Multiverse was, as usual, dead) – a video by davidolundell on TikTok, posted by the blog sometiktoksarevalid, of I presume David showing off a desk that was absolutely FULL of various interlocked secret compartments and drawers (claiming that his “future wife’s mother-in-law” – yes, that’s how he put it – asked him to keep something in it...that something being an epi-pen XD). With a comment by dduane about how her late husband Peter would have loved that desk, as he always wanted more secret compartments in stuff. XD It was a cool and fun video, and I just wanted to share it!
Whew! Yeah, that write-up definitely took longer than I wanted, as I definitely wanted to get more in the VLA(NS) queue today...but hopefully I can sort the rest of it out tomorrow. Gotta at least get Newt's gift fic post completed! For now, though, I have to head to bed -- night all!
Work – I must report that today was a pretty damn “meh” day at work. On the plus side:
-->The phone calls have finally calmed down, meaning we can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes looking things up for people – I just had to update some parish relationships and call back a guy looking to update his recurring gift today
-->I was able to confirm to a guy who called yesterday that a gift had been posted today, which was nice
-->I got a very nice e-mail from a lady who I’d e-mailed about having both a pledge and recurring gift (people sometimes think they’re the same thing, which they are not, leading to them having two credit card charges when they try to “renew” their gift), thanking me for letting her know and choosing to keep the recurring gift
-->And I was able to start making a bit of progress toward clearing up some other issues, such as taking off the gifts that were actually meant for the newspaper office (which involves sending a memo to Fiscal so we can issue said office a check for the misattributed gifts)
On the minus side, however:
-->I also had to tell two people who’d called earlier looking for their gifts that no, said gifts had NOT shown up yet, I’m sorry (one guy is sending in a replacement, while the other woman is going to check with her parish and see if they still have it)
-->The credit card people never got back to us about the gift we had problems with yesterday, and when I tried to set it up again (before calling the guy back, as I didn’t want to waste his time if it went wrong), I got the same error, which is annoying
-->And I discovered that the damn issue of pledge payments not being posted if they’re charged on the same day the pledge is made is STILL PRESENT. Meaning I spent most of the day researching that to get a list of missed payments. >( And even worse? While checking all the credit card pledges our processors have posted recently, I found that the one payment that should have been excluded as a duplicate (a down payment on a pledge made in the same batch) was very nearly double-posted! Fortunately our database people caught that one before it actually happened, but – cripes, does it piss me off that the LEGIT ones are being suppressed while THAT one nearly slipped through!
So yes – very “meh.” *shakehead* We’ll see how things shake out tomorrow – I’ve got the check-in call with the credit card people in the afternoon, not that I expect anything to come of it...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – and I chose to stick with Jon of Many A True Nerd for today’s session on the bike, as I’d seen something else I wanted to watch on his channel while bringing yesterday’s F:NV YOLO Remastered video. Accordingly, I spent my workout pedaling my way through roughly the first half of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Low XP Challenge!” A special one-off video Jon did six years ago to answer a very interesting question: What’s the lowest amount of XP one can earn playing New Vegas while still beating the game? His attempt to find out has so far featured –
A) The creation of Jo, the Perpetually Surprised Courier! A woman who has:
I. 10 Strength, 1 Perception, 10 Endurance, 1 Charisma, 10 Intelligence, 7 Agility, and 1 Luck as her SPECIAL stats (because passing skill checks is forbidden in this run – those give XP, after all – Jon decided the best thing to do was to set her up so she could both easily punch to death everything in her way, and easily take a hit or two)
II. Melee Weapons, Unarmed, and Barter as her tagged skills (because Jon wasn’t sure if she was going to handle her fights with melee weapons or unarmed ones, and because she was going to have to do a lot of buying and selling, so she might as well get better prices while doing so)
III. And Skilled (which immediately adds +5 to all skills but lowers experience gained by -10%) and Heavy Handed (which makes all melee and unarmed attacks do 20% more base damage at the cost of less critical hit damage) as her traits (because the first trait was essential to lowering the amount of XP she received during the game, and the second would just help keep her alive)
Easily one of Jon’s odder characters, to be sure – at least she got a somewhat normal name, I suppose. XD
( We always need a cut for these )
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another page done on this tonight, covering –
A) Skelter recovering from Alice getting quite into his personal space while reminding everyone that LaCroix has Dominate (hence why she couldn’t try to warn Nines earlier) and that she wouldn’t have minded at ALL if Nines killed Grout, then asking a nearby vampire named Rob to verify if Alice was telling the truth or not, since he seemed to have a sixth sense about these things – cue a fictional vampire version of Rob Brydon from “Would I Lie To You?” confirming that Alice was telling the truth; a fictional vampire version of Lee Mack stating that even if she wasn’t, he wasn’t going to be the one to confront her; and a fictional vampire version of David Mitchell complaining that Lee never seems to find him scary when he gets mad. Causing Lee to inform David that that’s because he’s hilarious when he gets mad (which he is), and Rob to try and defuse the argument. And then David and Lee to start arguing about Lee’s claim that he can smell a dead fly across the room (a reference to a particularly ridiculous lie the showrunners gave Lee once in the “Quick Fire Lies” round). XD I know this is going to probably make a lot of people go “???” but fuck it, I love WILTY and I want to add the boys into my fic. I already put in the vampire version of Ed Sheeran from his “Bad Habits” music video!
B) Skelter telling Alice after all that that he’s willing to accept she might have been a patsy, but he’s watching her – Alice said that was fair, and confirmed with him that Nines got out of the city well ahead of the Blood Hunt (Skelter explaining they overheard some “Cammy fucks” discussing Nines murdering Grout and bundled him out of there). She was quite glad to hear that Nines wasn’t going to be immediately murdered, at least!
C) Damsel, still pissed off with Alice, telling her that she should consider herself really lucky that Nines got out in time, and asking what the hell she’d even done for them lately – cue Alice telling her about killing Pisha, startling our favorite bereted bitch out of her bad mood for a few seconds. XD Alice’s description of the Nagaraja’s death (stumbling into her own mystical fire and needing a couple of mercy shots to the head) made the entire bar shudder, and Skelter wondered how the hell Alice kept even finding this shit –
Cue Alice going “Rabbit keeps running off and forcing me to chase him.” XD I left off with Skelter suggesting she try “ignoring the fucking hallucinations for five minutes” and Damsel demanding any information she might have on LaCroix – tomorrow, we’ll pick up with Alice telling them all about her upcoming trip to Hollywood to find Gary!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – before diving into the Workout Video Write-Up above, I made sure to get in one YouTube Short that I saw in my Recommendeds and found intriguing: “The Great Old One Warlock's best reaction in Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream! A little video showcasing how GOO Warlocks get some special dialogue when they come across a strange hole in the wall with disturbing tendrils coming out of it in what I believe is Moonrise Towers in Act 2! First, upon encountering the hole (which is actually a trap laid by the Absolute, the Big Bad of the game, hoping to grab the player character for a little chat should they be dumb enough to stick their hand in), a GOO Warlock will note that, whatever this thing is, it excites their patron. And when they stick their hand in the hole and feel something grab it, they can choose to “Invite the presence in. There’s always room for one more.” Leading to the Warlock being pulled into a strange void, surrounded by Elder Brain tentacles as the Artefact works overtime trying to keep them safe from the Absolute’s influence during the aforementioned chat –
And, in this particular video, to “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing as the eldritch vibes roll. XD It was very funny – I’m glad I took a few minutes to watch it! *quietly notes down another thing for Smiler to try once they’re at the correct part of the game...*
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Eh, check, but I didn’t get as much done here as I might have hoped thanks to the Workout Video Write-Up taking up so much of my time. But I did get one thing into the queue for tomorrow on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (Valice Multiverse was, as usual, dead) – a video by davidolundell on TikTok, posted by the blog sometiktoksarevalid, of I presume David showing off a desk that was absolutely FULL of various interlocked secret compartments and drawers (claiming that his “future wife’s mother-in-law” – yes, that’s how he put it – asked him to keep something in it...that something being an epi-pen XD). With a comment by dduane about how her late husband Peter would have loved that desk, as he always wanted more secret compartments in stuff. XD It was a cool and fun video, and I just wanted to share it!
Whew! Yeah, that write-up definitely took longer than I wanted, as I definitely wanted to get more in the VLA(NS) queue today...but hopefully I can sort the rest of it out tomorrow. Gotta at least get Newt's gift fic post completed! For now, though, I have to head to bed -- night all!
