Pretty Decent Thursday

I can't say I have any real complaints about how the day went, as my write-up should prove:

Work – It was another fairly quiet day at work, I’m pleased to report – things seem to have FINALLY calmed down after the latest mailing. My day consisted pretty much entirely of:

A) Finishing off the last of the roster maintenance from the latest round of exceptions (marking people “inactive” and updating parishes and such), and looking through the older batches to see there had been any updates to the stuff still in limbo (two failed credit card gifts had been redone, which was good)

B) Writing up a memo to Fiscal to tell them about the newspaper office payments that had been wrongly posted to our Appeal, then doing a batch to remove all the gifts from our system

C) Doing a few more reversals to correct gifts put on under the wrong source code, and move overpayments to new pledges, and put on a missed pledge and apply some payments to it

D) And taking a couple of calls, updating one lady’s parish affiliation and helping another guy set up a credit card pledge

Nothing too strenuous, which I must say suits me fine. *nods firmly* We’ll see how tomorrow goes – fingers crossed the end of the week isn’t a total shitshow! I already know there’s going to be a BIG GL...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – and today’s session on the bike saw me pedaling my way through THREE things –

A) The end of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Low XP Challenge!” The Not-Quite-A-Speedrun Adventures of Jo The Low XP Courier ended with:

I. Jo, trying again to murder Lanius on Very Hard difficulty, loading herself up on all the drugs and chasing him as he tried to flee to heal again (with him running into the exact same corner as he did the first time) – and while she herself briefly got stuck in that same corner, she managed to get to him and punch him repeatedly, basically sliding him out of his protective grouping of guards because Bethesda physics were in FULL play there. XD She then managed to kill him with a few uppercuts and, despite being on fire from some sort of tossed grenade, run back to the front gates to trigger the ending – only for there to be no explosion, and no friendly NCR to save her…leading to…

( The Customary Cut! )

B) The entirety of “7 Games That Aged Unbelievably Well: Commenter Edition” by OXBox! Yes, in order to ensure I watched this week’s list video, I watched it with my workout. :p This one featured Mike and Andy talking about those games the commenters on their last video on this subject believe aged shockingly well, and included such bangers as:

I. The original Dishonored, due to its gorgeous art style inspired by oil paintings and very engaging gameplay (Stealthy assassin stuff! The ability to parkour around the city! Unleashing mystical bullshit powers! And even just blowing people up with containers of whale oil! That last was Mike’s favorite :p)

II. The original Portal, due to its excellent physics puzzling and introduction of one of the best villains in all of gaming, GLaDOS (it may be short, but it’s beloved even 19 years later for a reason)

III. And the original Deus Ex from 2000, due to its high level of player freedom in deciding how you want to play and its frankly terrifying ability to predict the future (the Twin Towers going down in a terrorist attack, a global pandemic, and AI threatening us all – admittedly that last was SENTIENT AI with a possible murder complex, not ChatGPT and the like hallucinating in our general direction, but still)

Good to know that, even as many games in the present fail us, past games have still got our back!

C) And the entirety of “Astarion Best Moments | D&D Live | Baldur's Gate 3 Cast” by Dungeons & Dragons! A two-and-a-half minute compilation of some of Neil Newbon’s best moments from a live D&D show he did at Magic Con 2025 with fellow BG3 companions Theo Solomon (Wyll), Samantha Béart (Karlach), and Devora Wilde (Lae’zel). Some particularly amusing moments were:

I. Neil showing off a backpack and declaring “First day at vampire school! We’re back!” XD

II. Astarion trying to explain flirting to Karlach by saying “You know how you see a goblin, and you just want to smash it? Well, flirting is like you see the goblin, and you pretend you don’t see the goblin. And then you let the goblin try to ‘smash’ you” (finger quotes LIBERALLY used), while poor Karlach made some very “I’m not buying this” faces XD

III. The DM (Aabria Iyengar) having an NPC tell Astarion, “You’re pretty, but you’re not that pretty,” causing a huffy Astarion to be like “In my experience, several thousand people might disagree, darling” XD

IV. Karlach pointing to Astarion during an argument with Lae’zel and informing her “Lae’zel, if you hurt this sweet baby boy, who has never done anything wrong in his life, I will end you” – cue Aabria looking at everyone like “really?” midway through, while Neil, after a moment’s surprise, leaned into it and had Astarion agree “No, never!” before pointing at the audience and going “NOTHING PROVABLE! NOTHING PROVABLE!”

V. And Astarion asking Karlach if she wanted to fuck off from something at one point, as represented by him and Samantha doing long “pretending to sneak away” strides while he hummed the Pink Panther theme XD

Fun stuff, even without the context! Perhaps I’ll try to catch up on some of the other D&D shenanigans the BG3 cast have gotten up to once I’m more caught up with Oxventure...

2. Start editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got through the first page of this tonight, covering:

A) Victor’s suspicions about Barnaby and Kasimir still being in the wine cellar being proven right when he brought Smiler and Alice down there post-getting his things; Barnaby told him that he and Kasimir had been having a delightful time, and Kasimir noted that Victor’s parents very much did not skimp on the good wine. Victor said it was all for appearances and politely pretended not to notice the missing bottles from the racks, or Kasimir clinking a bit when he moved. XD

B) Victor asking Barnaby and Kasimir if they were ready to go to the vault – Barnaby was rather reluctant, as he was enjoying being surrounded by so much good alcohol, but Kasimir told him to keep his eyes on the prize, and that he wanted his Coin back in a form that they didn’t have to worry about Barnaby drinking if they left him alone for five seconds. XD Barnaby thus agreed to leave, and Victor began leading the way up the stairs, letting him know that it was a little ways past the kitchen, and that while he didn’t expect them to have any trouble getting to it, it did have some rather heavy security on it. (I also took the opportunity to have Victor decide that he could call Barnaby “Barnaby” in the privacy of his own head if Kasimir was allowed to call him that out loud, so now I can edit the heist scene to actually use Barnaby’s first name, which I prefer. Yay!)

C) Victor starting to tell Kasimir about the various security measures on the vault...only to be immediately interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Pemberly, looking for her lost kitchen staff. Fortunately, while she was initially puzzled to see Victor in the wine cellar, the minute she saw Barnaby, she was like “ah. Now I understand totally.” XD Barnaby accordingly spun a yarn about how he’d insisted on having a little peek when Victor mentioned it, being a connoisseur of sorts after all, and how Victor and the staff had been VERY helpful and accommodating. Mrs. Pemberly was like “I’m glad to hear that, I just wish someone had warned me that these three were being borrowed for a tour” –

Causing Barnaby to reply, “Well, that’s not my fault.” XD Alice quickly apologized, saying that they’d been pulled away suddenly and hadn’t been able to send word – Smiler added that they were just trying to make the most number of people happy as possible. Mrs. Pemberly assured them they were doing marvelously, given how they’d fixed a soup that had been giving them trouble for a half-hour in thirty seconds. :p I ended with her telling Barnaby that she knew it wasn’t his job to tell her anything, she just wished she’d gotten a warning in general – tomorrow, we’ll pick up from here and get the gang past this first obstacle! Given I rolled a crit when I did the engagement roll for this score, that won’t be hard at all. :p

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – actually had time this evening for a short video I spotted in my Recommendeds: “WALL-E: What the bots are "saying" according to the script (Dialogue that's never spoken)” by Emoticon! Apparently Emoticon got their hands on the “shooting script” for the movie, and discovered that it had dialogue for all the robots so the people doing their various blips and beeps and other electronic noises (plus the people voicing WALL*E and EVE) would know what basic concepts should be conveyed. So they paired snippets of that dialogue with the appropriate clips in the movie to show us what the robots were actually “saying!” Notable examples included:

I. EVE apparently asks WALL*E “So what’s your story?” when she suddenly turns to talk to him while they’re watching the burning BnL cruise liners together

II. MO lectures WALL*E “Look, it stays clean. Yo got that?” while cleaning up his tread marks right before GO-4 and his minions show up to collect EVE on the Axiom (and of course, all it earns him is a tread to the face)

III. EVE demands to know what WALL*E is doing on the Axiom when she discovers him while the Captain is reading the manual and angrily goes “You’re going to get me in trouble!” while WALL*E is just looking at her dreamily from under the console XD

IV. WALL*E genuinely declares “Let her go or I’ll shoot!” in the scene where he grabs EVE’s gun arm and tries to threaten the repair bots into leaving her alone, with EVE going “Put the gun down…” in response (not that it helps)

V. And my personal favorite – I always assumed that the little robot that goes and shoves WALL*E closer to the stewards when the escaped robots are caught was trying to kiss up to said stewards – going “here, this is the troublemaker!” But no – according to the script, it’s actually telling WALL*E “Show ‘em whose boss” – aka, it’s fully expecting WALL*E to shoot them. XD It must have been so disappointed when EVE came and took her arm back!

Good stuff! It’s fun to get little “behind the scenes” looks like these. :D

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – Valice Multiverse was dead again, but I got some important things done over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I got my Song Saturday post sorted – a reblog of my original post for Rival Sons’ “Shooting Stars!” A song that is all about pushing back against those trying to keep you down. An excellent anthem for our current situation, and one that I associate with my beloved Valicer In The Dark universe to boot (specifically, with its Smiler, who would happily sing “my laughter is louder than your shouting will ever be” at Wickerman). So that’s all set, yay!

B) And second – while I didn’t get anything into a proper draft yet (it currently only exists as some notes on my phone), I came up with some ideas for Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes revolving around Easter! As I haven’t done any in a while (at least not any Modern AU-themed ones), and I really wanted to do a fresh set. Current ideas include Smiler asking Alice if the White Rabbit knows the Easter Bunny (and Alice informing them that they’re related in the same way Lord Helmet from Spaceballs was “related” to Lone Starr – in the most confusing and convoluted way possible :P); Smiler looking for their special Easter-themed shirt in preparation for going out with Victor and Alice, and Alice teasing them that their regular wardrobe (which features a lot of bright colors, mainly yellow, and patterns) should do nicely for the holiday; the trio coloring eggs – Smiler using their chemist skills to make perfectly-tinted colors while Victor’s artistry comes out on full display; and Victor and Smiler getting into a wrestling match over a bag of Cadbury’s Mini-Eggs – only for Alice to come along and steal it while they’re distracted. XD Looking forward to writing them up properly sometime this weekend! (Really need to finish the VITD ones sitting in my drafts too...)

*nods* Not bad, not bad at all! But now I've got to get to bed, as I still have one more day of workweek looming. Night all!