It Is Done Tuesday
Aug. 26th, 2025 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWhat is done? Well, let's head to the write-ups detailing how my day went and find out:
Work – I am pleased to report that some of the problems I was dealing with at work got resolved today! In order:
A) Somebody from our processor’s IT center called us and got the VPN service we use to access the scanning app with all the scanned cards and stuff working again
B) I was able to talk to my supervisor about the handful of remaining overpayments that I had questions on and confirm with him the correct way to handle them (lot of splitting of final checks), allowing me to do a reversal batch to fix them all – and I also got in contact with two more people about their overpayments and was able to fix their issues! So there’s literally just one overpayment remaining that I can’t do anything with as the person hasn’t gotten back to me yet. We’ll see if I can talk about it with my boss tomorrow!
C) The processors also finally got back to us with some check scans we asked them for last week to figure out which checks went on which pledges for a guy who has two! Unfortunately, neither check had a memo line indicating which check went to which pledge, so we had to call him back and ask him what he wanted us to do – ended up directing both checks to one pledge, so one pledge now has $400 paid and one has $300. Hooray for finally getting THAT sorted!
D) And while the issue with me being unable to update credit cards the normal way because I couldn’t get the credit card company’s website to connect while in a reversal batch was not fixed today (in fact, it got worse, as it went from “refused to connect” to a page full of code gobbledygook), I at least found out the reason – the credit card company migrated their stuff to new servers recently, and they’re having to rebuild their “allow” lists. Which includes our main database company. *sigh* Annoying, but now I know. Here’s hoping that gets sorted fast!
Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day, with me doing obituaries and related roster maintenance for most of it. Phone did not ring much, for which I was grateful, because I kept worrying one would be a credit card related thing and – yeah. Not really happening right now. *shakehead* We’ll see how tomorrow goes! Fingers crossed for the credit card stuff to be resolved, anyway...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Alien The Roleplaying Game: Evolved Edition | Oxventure One-Shot ft. Natural Six!” Our intrepid survey team of Singleton (Jane), Hirsch (Doug), MacWhirr (Aoife), and Holroyd (Andy) got a good chunk of the way into Act 2 of “Hope’s Last Day” in this chunklet, which featured:
A) The group finding a communicator on the table next to where Miranda’s smashed-up corpse was sitting, and Hirsch answering it to find her science officer, Theodora Komiskey, on the other end. She told the group that she was currently trapped in the Med Lab thanks to the base going into lockdown, and needed rescue – and that it was in their best interest to rescue her, as she had a working keycard to the shuttle she and Miranda arrived in and thus could get them all off this godforsaken moon. Hirsch said they’d take it under consideration, and a discussion resulted on if they could trust her, and if they should head to Operations upstairs first to maybe get some more weaponry and find out more about what was going on (hoping to find Al Simpson, or at least some footage on the CCTV) –
And then it was revealed that Hirsch had forgotten to hang up, and Komiskey had heard all of that. XD Komiskey insisted that they needed her to escape, and they assured her that they’d go get her, just sit tight for now.
B) Holroyd revealing to the shocked humans that he already knew that there was a horrible alien lifeform running around the base, and that the whole reason Miranda and Komiskey showed up was to get a sample of it for Weyland-Yutani. The information was classified, but Holroyd figured that, since they’d already seen the damn thing, there was no point in keeping secrets. I think we just learned his secret agenda from Act 1 – “get the humans out of there without revealing there’s a Xenomorph about!” :D Neat.
C) The group heading up Stairwell A to the second floor of South Wing (which came out right near the morgue, nice) – MacWhirr made sure to root around in the nearest store cupboard for goodies, and got a power cell for recharging her motion detector and a flashlight, nice. Hirsch also decided to tell a joke to try and lighten the mood and reduce everyone’s stress – Mike originally wasn’t going to let him (as he was pretty sure Hirsch didn’t have the “Banter” talent necessary) but Andy insisted he should at least hear the joke first. Said joke proved to be “What’s black and white and red all over? A mime being bludgeoned to death.” Mike ruled it reduced everyone’s stress by one because they were all so perplexed by why he would consider that a good joke to tell considering the circumstances. XD
D) The group preparing to make their way down the corridor to Operations – only for MacWhirr to get a ping on her motion detector. A ping that came from a vent nearby, at about foot height. MacWhirr was all ready to tell everyone to be as stealthy as possible –
And then Holroyd walked up to the vent, put the nozzle of his cutting tool through the grate, and let out a burst of flame. XD However, rather than the stench of Xenomorph flesh getting burned, the distinct stench of burning plastic and hair hit everyone’s noses. It was pointed out to Holroyd that he might have hurt one of his fellow androids (horrifying him), and Hirsch insisted on opening the grate –
And inside they found a partially-melted doll with burned hair. Mike then revealed that the motion detector was no longer picking up anything at this point, and said the flame must have convinced whoever was in there to scarper…
And Andy was like “I nearly flamethrowered Newt, didn’t I.” XD Mike didn’t explicitly confirm this, but yes, it seems rather likely, Andy! Could have completely fucked up the movie’s continuity there!
E) The group entering Operations (after noting suspiciously that the Med Lab did not look like it was in lockdown) and having a poke around, finding the CCTV and the “personal identifier transmitter” (a little ID tag all colonists have implanted) tracking terminal – though both were covered in gore and currently nonfunctional. Holroyd fixed the PIT terminal first and looked through it with MacWhirr, finding that most of the souls that were supposed to be around were simply not showing up. There were a few pings, though – notably, Al Simpson was in the morgue with a colonist named John Marachuck; Komiskey in the Surgery room off the main Med Lab (giving her plausible deniability when it came to her “locked in” story); five colonists in the walkway to the casino; and tech Wes Osterman in the actual casino. He then moved onto fixing the CCTV while the still-freaking-out Singleton hid under another desk and Hirsch went looking for more weaponry – and found that a looot of the cameras were showing scenes of utter gore and carnage. He made sure those did NOT appear on the monitors. He also found an image of Wes in the colony, with a big creepy shadow near him – he skipped over that too, and instead showed everyone a view of the shuttle on the landing pad, proving that there was a way out and calming them all down a little. Aww.
While all that was happening, Hirsch got a bunch of successes on his roll to find weaponry and got himself a nice pulse rifle with an underslung grenade launcher! He took that and asked who wanted his revolver – Singleton took it, but refused to let Holroyd take her fire ax when he asked. HER weapons, damn it! Holroyd resorted to ripping a coolant pipe off the wall –
Taking his eyes off Hirsch, who promptly messed with the CCTV, saw Wes and the big scary shadow, and insisted that they try to save him – he was his buddy! They played poker together every Friday! MacWhirr was initially like “your poker buddy is worth risking your life for?” but Holroyd pointed out it was actually on the way to the shuttle. So the plan became “find Komiskey, get her keycard (and possibly her too), hit the casino to see about saving Wes, then get to the landing pad.” *nods* Seems like a simple plan where absolutely nothing could go wrong. :p
F) The gang thus heading to Med Lab to see about getting Komiskey! Holroyd attempted to suss out any potential dangers in the room by letting his mice go free – unfortunately, Mike ruled that they were probably too small to be tasty to a Xenomorph, and that they were just so happy to be free they ran off into different corners and would probably never be seen again. Holroyd: “NOOOOOO” XD So the group just went inside, where they found an absolutely ransacked lab (understandable, given this seems to be the place where most of the colonists made their last stand) –
And Komiskey, behind a big glass window in the Surgery room! MacWhirr promptly went up to her and demanded to see her keycard – fortunately, Komiskey had the same type of lanyard as Miranda and could produce it. I left off with MacWhirr noting that Komiskey was rather pale, but seemed otherwise unharmed, and demanding to know how she got trapped in the first place – tomorrow, the stressful adventures continue with the answer to that question, and the possible rescue of the doctor! I imagine there are going to be many more stress-outs and consequences from same going forward...well, for everyone but Andy, whose android character is immune to stress. Jokes were made about him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Jimmy Buffeting around the place. XD Meanwhile, poor Aoife is basically having to resolve various stress complications practically every roll...we’ll see if the dice keep being mean to her during my next ride!
2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Everyone – I am pleased to say: check plus. Because not only did I finish the final edits on this damn chapter that has taken me so long to wrestle into submission because I kept massively overusing Alice’s name –
I also went ahead and posted it. Yes, Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” is now live! Please enjoy Alice’s horrible terrible no-good very bad night at Grout’s mansion – all 54 pages of it. Seriously, please enjoy it, because this one was kind of a bitch to edit, and I need to know it was worth it. *sigh* I am taking tomorrow off to just mess around with my master doc for my BG3 Smiler, and THEN I am spending the long weekend and all of next week with “The Van Dort Vacancy.” I need my VITD crime trio back after all this.
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – as you might imagine, finishing those edits and getting Chapter 5 posted kept me from watching anything. Though, considering I keep hearing awful things about YouTube forcing AI on people (apparently they’re just using it on people’s shorts to “enhance clarity” or some bullshit like that – and no, they are not ASKING before they do this) and their stupid new AI age-verification bullshit, I should probably be watching way less YouTube anyway. And listening to it, as one of my main uses of YouTube is as background music for other stuff. Fortunately, I have recently been reminded that purchasing the Digital Deluxe edition of Baldur’s Gate III entitled me to the digital soundtrack, so now I have all those tracks I can use as background music when I’m doing stuff! Nice!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so there was nothing to do over there, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) I did get something into the queue for Wednesday – the link to Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” natch. Dunno what I’m going to put up for the rest of the week, but that’s a problem for Future Vicky.
And now this is done too, and I can go to bed. *sigh* I'll see you all tomorrow -- night all!
Work – I am pleased to report that some of the problems I was dealing with at work got resolved today! In order:
A) Somebody from our processor’s IT center called us and got the VPN service we use to access the scanning app with all the scanned cards and stuff working again
B) I was able to talk to my supervisor about the handful of remaining overpayments that I had questions on and confirm with him the correct way to handle them (lot of splitting of final checks), allowing me to do a reversal batch to fix them all – and I also got in contact with two more people about their overpayments and was able to fix their issues! So there’s literally just one overpayment remaining that I can’t do anything with as the person hasn’t gotten back to me yet. We’ll see if I can talk about it with my boss tomorrow!
C) The processors also finally got back to us with some check scans we asked them for last week to figure out which checks went on which pledges for a guy who has two! Unfortunately, neither check had a memo line indicating which check went to which pledge, so we had to call him back and ask him what he wanted us to do – ended up directing both checks to one pledge, so one pledge now has $400 paid and one has $300. Hooray for finally getting THAT sorted!
D) And while the issue with me being unable to update credit cards the normal way because I couldn’t get the credit card company’s website to connect while in a reversal batch was not fixed today (in fact, it got worse, as it went from “refused to connect” to a page full of code gobbledygook), I at least found out the reason – the credit card company migrated their stuff to new servers recently, and they’re having to rebuild their “allow” lists. Which includes our main database company. *sigh* Annoying, but now I know. Here’s hoping that gets sorted fast!
Other than that, it was a pretty quiet day, with me doing obituaries and related roster maintenance for most of it. Phone did not ring much, for which I was grateful, because I kept worrying one would be a credit card related thing and – yeah. Not really happening right now. *shakehead* We’ll see how tomorrow goes! Fingers crossed for the credit card stuff to be resolved, anyway...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Alien The Roleplaying Game: Evolved Edition | Oxventure One-Shot ft. Natural Six!” Our intrepid survey team of Singleton (Jane), Hirsch (Doug), MacWhirr (Aoife), and Holroyd (Andy) got a good chunk of the way into Act 2 of “Hope’s Last Day” in this chunklet, which featured:
A) The group finding a communicator on the table next to where Miranda’s smashed-up corpse was sitting, and Hirsch answering it to find her science officer, Theodora Komiskey, on the other end. She told the group that she was currently trapped in the Med Lab thanks to the base going into lockdown, and needed rescue – and that it was in their best interest to rescue her, as she had a working keycard to the shuttle she and Miranda arrived in and thus could get them all off this godforsaken moon. Hirsch said they’d take it under consideration, and a discussion resulted on if they could trust her, and if they should head to Operations upstairs first to maybe get some more weaponry and find out more about what was going on (hoping to find Al Simpson, or at least some footage on the CCTV) –
And then it was revealed that Hirsch had forgotten to hang up, and Komiskey had heard all of that. XD Komiskey insisted that they needed her to escape, and they assured her that they’d go get her, just sit tight for now.
B) Holroyd revealing to the shocked humans that he already knew that there was a horrible alien lifeform running around the base, and that the whole reason Miranda and Komiskey showed up was to get a sample of it for Weyland-Yutani. The information was classified, but Holroyd figured that, since they’d already seen the damn thing, there was no point in keeping secrets. I think we just learned his secret agenda from Act 1 – “get the humans out of there without revealing there’s a Xenomorph about!” :D Neat.
C) The group heading up Stairwell A to the second floor of South Wing (which came out right near the morgue, nice) – MacWhirr made sure to root around in the nearest store cupboard for goodies, and got a power cell for recharging her motion detector and a flashlight, nice. Hirsch also decided to tell a joke to try and lighten the mood and reduce everyone’s stress – Mike originally wasn’t going to let him (as he was pretty sure Hirsch didn’t have the “Banter” talent necessary) but Andy insisted he should at least hear the joke first. Said joke proved to be “What’s black and white and red all over? A mime being bludgeoned to death.” Mike ruled it reduced everyone’s stress by one because they were all so perplexed by why he would consider that a good joke to tell considering the circumstances. XD
D) The group preparing to make their way down the corridor to Operations – only for MacWhirr to get a ping on her motion detector. A ping that came from a vent nearby, at about foot height. MacWhirr was all ready to tell everyone to be as stealthy as possible –
And then Holroyd walked up to the vent, put the nozzle of his cutting tool through the grate, and let out a burst of flame. XD However, rather than the stench of Xenomorph flesh getting burned, the distinct stench of burning plastic and hair hit everyone’s noses. It was pointed out to Holroyd that he might have hurt one of his fellow androids (horrifying him), and Hirsch insisted on opening the grate –
And inside they found a partially-melted doll with burned hair. Mike then revealed that the motion detector was no longer picking up anything at this point, and said the flame must have convinced whoever was in there to scarper…
And Andy was like “I nearly flamethrowered Newt, didn’t I.” XD Mike didn’t explicitly confirm this, but yes, it seems rather likely, Andy! Could have completely fucked up the movie’s continuity there!
E) The group entering Operations (after noting suspiciously that the Med Lab did not look like it was in lockdown) and having a poke around, finding the CCTV and the “personal identifier transmitter” (a little ID tag all colonists have implanted) tracking terminal – though both were covered in gore and currently nonfunctional. Holroyd fixed the PIT terminal first and looked through it with MacWhirr, finding that most of the souls that were supposed to be around were simply not showing up. There were a few pings, though – notably, Al Simpson was in the morgue with a colonist named John Marachuck; Komiskey in the Surgery room off the main Med Lab (giving her plausible deniability when it came to her “locked in” story); five colonists in the walkway to the casino; and tech Wes Osterman in the actual casino. He then moved onto fixing the CCTV while the still-freaking-out Singleton hid under another desk and Hirsch went looking for more weaponry – and found that a looot of the cameras were showing scenes of utter gore and carnage. He made sure those did NOT appear on the monitors. He also found an image of Wes in the colony, with a big creepy shadow near him – he skipped over that too, and instead showed everyone a view of the shuttle on the landing pad, proving that there was a way out and calming them all down a little. Aww.
While all that was happening, Hirsch got a bunch of successes on his roll to find weaponry and got himself a nice pulse rifle with an underslung grenade launcher! He took that and asked who wanted his revolver – Singleton took it, but refused to let Holroyd take her fire ax when he asked. HER weapons, damn it! Holroyd resorted to ripping a coolant pipe off the wall –
Taking his eyes off Hirsch, who promptly messed with the CCTV, saw Wes and the big scary shadow, and insisted that they try to save him – he was his buddy! They played poker together every Friday! MacWhirr was initially like “your poker buddy is worth risking your life for?” but Holroyd pointed out it was actually on the way to the shuttle. So the plan became “find Komiskey, get her keycard (and possibly her too), hit the casino to see about saving Wes, then get to the landing pad.” *nods* Seems like a simple plan where absolutely nothing could go wrong. :p
F) The gang thus heading to Med Lab to see about getting Komiskey! Holroyd attempted to suss out any potential dangers in the room by letting his mice go free – unfortunately, Mike ruled that they were probably too small to be tasty to a Xenomorph, and that they were just so happy to be free they ran off into different corners and would probably never be seen again. Holroyd: “NOOOOOO” XD So the group just went inside, where they found an absolutely ransacked lab (understandable, given this seems to be the place where most of the colonists made their last stand) –
And Komiskey, behind a big glass window in the Surgery room! MacWhirr promptly went up to her and demanded to see her keycard – fortunately, Komiskey had the same type of lanyard as Miranda and could produce it. I left off with MacWhirr noting that Komiskey was rather pale, but seemed otherwise unharmed, and demanding to know how she got trapped in the first place – tomorrow, the stressful adventures continue with the answer to that question, and the possible rescue of the doctor! I imagine there are going to be many more stress-outs and consequences from same going forward...well, for everyone but Andy, whose android character is immune to stress. Jokes were made about him wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Jimmy Buffeting around the place. XD Meanwhile, poor Aoife is basically having to resolve various stress complications practically every roll...we’ll see if the dice keep being mean to her during my next ride!
2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Everyone – I am pleased to say: check plus. Because not only did I finish the final edits on this damn chapter that has taken me so long to wrestle into submission because I kept massively overusing Alice’s name –
I also went ahead and posted it. Yes, Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” is now live! Please enjoy Alice’s horrible terrible no-good very bad night at Grout’s mansion – all 54 pages of it. Seriously, please enjoy it, because this one was kind of a bitch to edit, and I need to know it was worth it. *sigh* I am taking tomorrow off to just mess around with my master doc for my BG3 Smiler, and THEN I am spending the long weekend and all of next week with “The Van Dort Vacancy.” I need my VITD crime trio back after all this.
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – as you might imagine, finishing those edits and getting Chapter 5 posted kept me from watching anything. Though, considering I keep hearing awful things about YouTube forcing AI on people (apparently they’re just using it on people’s shorts to “enhance clarity” or some bullshit like that – and no, they are not ASKING before they do this) and their stupid new AI age-verification bullshit, I should probably be watching way less YouTube anyway. And listening to it, as one of my main uses of YouTube is as background music for other stuff. Fortunately, I have recently been reminded that purchasing the Digital Deluxe edition of Baldur’s Gate III entitled me to the digital soundtrack, so now I have all those tracks I can use as background music when I’m doing stuff! Nice!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so there was nothing to do over there, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) I did get something into the queue for Wednesday – the link to Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” natch. Dunno what I’m going to put up for the rest of the week, but that’s a problem for Future Vicky.
And now this is done too, and I can go to bed. *sigh* I'll see you all tomorrow -- night all!
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