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Much Cooler Somewhat Calmer Day
May. 21st, 2026 11:53 pmYeah, the weather did a complete turn-around from the extreme heat and humidity and sunshine of the past couple of days, being rather cool and cloudy with a few morning sprinkles. To be fair, it was a relief after how hot the past couple of days have been -- and it made for a gorgeous sunset this evening, let me tell you. :p My day was accordingly a bit better, as the daily write-up should prove:
Work – Was another fairly quiet day at work – apart from the usual morning reports, my day was taken up pretty much entirely with:
A) Finishing off the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and cleaning up some other records that I found while I was at it – I also tried to call someone who I think sent us a credit card gift but didn’t include more than her name, but she was in a class and unwilling to talk. I’ll have to see if I can get her at some point tomorrow!
B) Taking a couple of credit card calls – one lady who I e-mailed yesterday about her second pledge card and if that meant she wanted to up her pledge or not (she did), and one lady who wanted to make a “double payment” on her pledge after confirming her balance (since she had the funds). Nothing too major – and the stupid payment screen actually worked today, so hooray for that.
C) Doing a bit more roster maintenance in between working on a crossword in the afternoon, because it was quiet and there wasn’t much else to do
D) And doing a reversal to move someone’s pledge overpayment into the next Appeal year as a one-time gift
Nothing too exciting! The most stress I had was from rereading my old “this is all the problems we’ve had with the credit card company” doc and making myself mad about how incompetent they are all over again. *sigh* Hopefully Friday will be a decent day – fingers crossed they let us out a little early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Today’s chunklet featured –
A) Doc Mitchell venturing out of Victortron’s shack and – after a moment’s worry about the sky turning a worrisome shade of yellow (fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a radstorm, as was Jon’s fear) – going to explore/loot the rest of Goodsprings! Or “Ghost Town,” as this mod officially named it, which at least assured Jon he wasn’t going to see much in the way of human enemies. His first three targets were:
I. The house that belonged to that lady who you have to save from the geckos during the tutorial, which gave him such goodies as dirty water, vodka, some squirrel on a stick, a Sunset Sarsaparilla, a single shotgun he could use to improve his own, and the Chinese Army Spec Ops Training Manual, which he immediately used to boost his Sneak skill up 3 points, as that was a VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in this mod!
II. Another random settler house, which had a Future Weapons Today magazine in the mailbox outside, a stimpack, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of dirty water, and – most importantly – a bottle of beer! Why was that the most important? Well, because in this mod, beer not only hydrates you (not as much of water, but it makes the H20 meter go down a bit), but it also removes rads AND heals sanity. Jon immediately declared that Doc Mitchell would probably be picking up a beer habit.
III. And the schoolhouse, which had worker ants inside instead of mantises – Doc M was able to kill one and kite around the rest, fortunately, allowing him to hack the nearby terminal and open the safe, scoring among other things two vials of antivenom, 29 bottlecaps, a super stimpack, and the Stealth Boy Jon was hoping for – plus some meat off the dead ant, because why waste the meat?
( This is not the Goodsprings Doc Mitchell originally knew... )
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got about a page of heist (or, rather, heist escape) shenanigans edited today, covering –
A) Kasimir confirming that Mrs. Pemberly would never have let any tradesmen steal anything from her kitchen, then – after asking where the tripwire in front of the vault door was (Alice pointed it out, as to her Caterpillar was still sitting on it) – inquiring if there were any guards at the tradesman’s entrance; Victor told him that there was supposed to be at least one servant there at all time to greet people and lead them to where they were meant to go, but he wouldn’t be surprised if said servant had been dragged into helping out with the party – after all, it looked like Nell had gone all out! Alice confirmed that the chaos in the kitchen seemed to support that hypothesis, and that she suspected Mrs. Pemberly had recruited all the help she could get from around the place. Smiler cheerfully declared (after pointing out the first tricky tile in the mosaic to Alice when she asked) that that meant the tradesman’s entrance was their best shot for getting out –
B) Prompting Barnaby to happily inform everyone that he would not be going out that door, thanks. Victor was like “what?” causing Barnaby to point out that he couldn’t use that door, he wasn’t a tradesman – quite the opposite, in fact! He didn’t mind if the others used that door, but he would be going out the front, thank you very much! Which you think would have gotten him in trouble with Kasimir –
Except, well, our favorite Spider had to reluctantly admit that Barnaby had a point – he was an invited guest, so it made sense for him to leave through the front with the others. And, in fact, it inspired Kasimir to suggest they all split up, with Barnaby going out the front, Victor and himself heading out the tradesman’s entrance, and Alice and Smiler leaving through the servant’s entrance near the kitchen (with the cover story of taking out the trash or something). Alice, however, said that while she wasn’t necessarily opposed to splitting up, she didn’t think going back by the kitchens was a good idea – Mrs. Pemberly was already waiting on their return, after all. Meaning that if she spotted Alice and Smiler, they’d probably be pulled into service decorating a cake or similar. She was fine with Barnaby leaving separately, but felt the rest of them should stick together. Smiler agreed and advised Barnaby that he should stick with them until they got to the tradesman’s entrance, then break off on his own so it didn’t look like he’d come directly out of the hallway with the entrance to the vault and the two unconscious guards, saying he could always say he just got lost if he got caught in this part of the house. (“Or just get lost, this is a big house,” Alice added.) Barnaby decided that was a plan he could live with, adding that he just had to look after his reputation, you know – he was already going to get comments about “indulging the upstarts” for attending this party. Smiler noted that rich people really seemed to like dragging each other down – Victor mumbled they didn’t know the half of it.
C) And the group then successfully making it back through the hallway traps and out the door at the other end, where Victor was relieved to find just the two unconscious guards from before, and no sign of anyone having come across them. He admitted that was a real piece of luck – Kasimir agreed, but said he didn’t want to rely on that, and urged Victor to lead them on…
And that is where I left off! So yeah, tomorrow Victor gets them within sniffing distance of the tradesman’s entrance, only for everything to start going wrong thanks to surprise Nell. I do still want to split this chapter into two chapters, but I think I’m just gonna edit the whole thing, then skim through it and look for the best break point. Seems logical to me, anyway!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Technical check again in the form of “watching these videos put me in the right mindset for working on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” –
A) Some more of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (this chunk featuring things like Barnaby getting utterly blinded by the high winds and grit atop the train because he refused the goggles, and Kasimir eating his babysitting certificate out of shame when one of the murderous children they’re traveling with gets charmed by a smoke bomb in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey and picks it up just as it goes off XD)
B) And all of of “Corpse Bride Moon Dance [HD]” by peanutbuttergold (which is the bit in the film where Emily dances in the moonlight in the forest when she and Victor go Upstairs again so he can “introduce her to his parents” – another one I haven’t watched in a bit, so!)
*shrug* Better than nothing!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Partial check – I unfortunately didn’t get to figuring out my Song Saturday for this week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (meh), but I did at least answer my friend thesatiricaldemon’s comment on the “Bugs Bunny vs Light Yagami” ask over on Valice Multiverse! He said “I maintain Columbo as my favorite ‘who could beat Light Yagami’ matchup, however this is becoming a close second;” I replied “I'm sure Columbo would do an excellent job giving Light just enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. :p But there is something to be said for Bugs's ‘just turn the genre to comedy’ approach too. XD” Just a bit of silly fun between friends!
Whew! Not bad!! Though it has kept me up a bit later than expected (mostly because I got distracted by stuff like "why does the Pip-Boy glove exist" and "oh, the YouTube Recommendeds is showing me a potential new BG3 mod for Wyll, that's neat"), so I'd better rush off to bed. Night all!
Work – Was another fairly quiet day at work – apart from the usual morning reports, my day was taken up pretty much entirely with:
A) Finishing off the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and cleaning up some other records that I found while I was at it – I also tried to call someone who I think sent us a credit card gift but didn’t include more than her name, but she was in a class and unwilling to talk. I’ll have to see if I can get her at some point tomorrow!
B) Taking a couple of credit card calls – one lady who I e-mailed yesterday about her second pledge card and if that meant she wanted to up her pledge or not (she did), and one lady who wanted to make a “double payment” on her pledge after confirming her balance (since she had the funds). Nothing too major – and the stupid payment screen actually worked today, so hooray for that.
C) Doing a bit more roster maintenance in between working on a crossword in the afternoon, because it was quiet and there wasn’t much else to do
D) And doing a reversal to move someone’s pledge overpayment into the next Appeal year as a one-time gift
Nothing too exciting! The most stress I had was from rereading my old “this is all the problems we’ve had with the credit card company” doc and making myself mad about how incompetent they are all over again. *sigh* Hopefully Friday will be a decent day – fingers crossed they let us out a little early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Today’s chunklet featured –
A) Doc Mitchell venturing out of Victortron’s shack and – after a moment’s worry about the sky turning a worrisome shade of yellow (fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a radstorm, as was Jon’s fear) – going to explore/loot the rest of Goodsprings! Or “Ghost Town,” as this mod officially named it, which at least assured Jon he wasn’t going to see much in the way of human enemies. His first three targets were:
I. The house that belonged to that lady who you have to save from the geckos during the tutorial, which gave him such goodies as dirty water, vodka, some squirrel on a stick, a Sunset Sarsaparilla, a single shotgun he could use to improve his own, and the Chinese Army Spec Ops Training Manual, which he immediately used to boost his Sneak skill up 3 points, as that was a VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in this mod!
II. Another random settler house, which had a Future Weapons Today magazine in the mailbox outside, a stimpack, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of dirty water, and – most importantly – a bottle of beer! Why was that the most important? Well, because in this mod, beer not only hydrates you (not as much of water, but it makes the H20 meter go down a bit), but it also removes rads AND heals sanity. Jon immediately declared that Doc Mitchell would probably be picking up a beer habit.
III. And the schoolhouse, which had worker ants inside instead of mantises – Doc M was able to kill one and kite around the rest, fortunately, allowing him to hack the nearby terminal and open the safe, scoring among other things two vials of antivenom, 29 bottlecaps, a super stimpack, and the Stealth Boy Jon was hoping for – plus some meat off the dead ant, because why waste the meat?
( This is not the Goodsprings Doc Mitchell originally knew... )
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got about a page of heist (or, rather, heist escape) shenanigans edited today, covering –
A) Kasimir confirming that Mrs. Pemberly would never have let any tradesmen steal anything from her kitchen, then – after asking where the tripwire in front of the vault door was (Alice pointed it out, as to her Caterpillar was still sitting on it) – inquiring if there were any guards at the tradesman’s entrance; Victor told him that there was supposed to be at least one servant there at all time to greet people and lead them to where they were meant to go, but he wouldn’t be surprised if said servant had been dragged into helping out with the party – after all, it looked like Nell had gone all out! Alice confirmed that the chaos in the kitchen seemed to support that hypothesis, and that she suspected Mrs. Pemberly had recruited all the help she could get from around the place. Smiler cheerfully declared (after pointing out the first tricky tile in the mosaic to Alice when she asked) that that meant the tradesman’s entrance was their best shot for getting out –
B) Prompting Barnaby to happily inform everyone that he would not be going out that door, thanks. Victor was like “what?” causing Barnaby to point out that he couldn’t use that door, he wasn’t a tradesman – quite the opposite, in fact! He didn’t mind if the others used that door, but he would be going out the front, thank you very much! Which you think would have gotten him in trouble with Kasimir –
Except, well, our favorite Spider had to reluctantly admit that Barnaby had a point – he was an invited guest, so it made sense for him to leave through the front with the others. And, in fact, it inspired Kasimir to suggest they all split up, with Barnaby going out the front, Victor and himself heading out the tradesman’s entrance, and Alice and Smiler leaving through the servant’s entrance near the kitchen (with the cover story of taking out the trash or something). Alice, however, said that while she wasn’t necessarily opposed to splitting up, she didn’t think going back by the kitchens was a good idea – Mrs. Pemberly was already waiting on their return, after all. Meaning that if she spotted Alice and Smiler, they’d probably be pulled into service decorating a cake or similar. She was fine with Barnaby leaving separately, but felt the rest of them should stick together. Smiler agreed and advised Barnaby that he should stick with them until they got to the tradesman’s entrance, then break off on his own so it didn’t look like he’d come directly out of the hallway with the entrance to the vault and the two unconscious guards, saying he could always say he just got lost if he got caught in this part of the house. (“Or just get lost, this is a big house,” Alice added.) Barnaby decided that was a plan he could live with, adding that he just had to look after his reputation, you know – he was already going to get comments about “indulging the upstarts” for attending this party. Smiler noted that rich people really seemed to like dragging each other down – Victor mumbled they didn’t know the half of it.
C) And the group then successfully making it back through the hallway traps and out the door at the other end, where Victor was relieved to find just the two unconscious guards from before, and no sign of anyone having come across them. He admitted that was a real piece of luck – Kasimir agreed, but said he didn’t want to rely on that, and urged Victor to lead them on…
And that is where I left off! So yeah, tomorrow Victor gets them within sniffing distance of the tradesman’s entrance, only for everything to start going wrong thanks to surprise Nell. I do still want to split this chapter into two chapters, but I think I’m just gonna edit the whole thing, then skim through it and look for the best break point. Seems logical to me, anyway!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Technical check again in the form of “watching these videos put me in the right mindset for working on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” –
A) Some more of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (this chunk featuring things like Barnaby getting utterly blinded by the high winds and grit atop the train because he refused the goggles, and Kasimir eating his babysitting certificate out of shame when one of the murderous children they’re traveling with gets charmed by a smoke bomb in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey and picks it up just as it goes off XD)
B) And all of of “Corpse Bride Moon Dance [HD]” by peanutbuttergold (which is the bit in the film where Emily dances in the moonlight in the forest when she and Victor go Upstairs again so he can “introduce her to his parents” – another one I haven’t watched in a bit, so!)
*shrug* Better than nothing!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Partial check – I unfortunately didn’t get to figuring out my Song Saturday for this week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (meh), but I did at least answer my friend thesatiricaldemon’s comment on the “Bugs Bunny vs Light Yagami” ask over on Valice Multiverse! He said “I maintain Columbo as my favorite ‘who could beat Light Yagami’ matchup, however this is becoming a close second;” I replied “I'm sure Columbo would do an excellent job giving Light just enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. :p But there is something to be said for Bugs's ‘just turn the genre to comedy’ approach too. XD” Just a bit of silly fun between friends!
Whew! Not bad!! Though it has kept me up a bit later than expected (mostly because I got distracted by stuff like "why does the Pip-Boy glove exist" and "oh, the YouTube Recommendeds is showing me a potential new BG3 mod for Wyll, that's neat"), so I'd better rush off to bed. Night all!
