T-Minus 2...
Sep. 10th, 2025 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThe Big Trip continues to creep up on us, slowly but surely! And I'm feeling some post-period distraction, so let's just get through the write-up for the day:
Work – Fairly quiet Wednesday at work, overall –
A) I did the morning credit card reports (no problems getting into the website today, yay)
B) I looked at the latest report of people with pledge overpayments and one-time-gifts credited to the wrong campaign, called those who needed calling, and fixed the other gifts as necessary (somebody overpaid a pledge by a DOLLAR, sheesh)
C) I finished off the obituaries from Sunday and did some other related roster maintenance
D) I updated someone’s credit card with them over the phone
E) I went through some returned mail, which resulted in me discarding two pieces (including a thank-you letter from June that just kept coming back) and writing off a pledge in response to the third (capital campaign, donors haven’t paid since 2022)
F) I had the check-in meeting with the credit card people – no updates on any of our problems as usual, though I was able to get my contact to actually update the website to make sure that new gifts were coming in with 2026 CCA source codes (as that’s what they have to go under now) – fucking hooray
G) And I started typing up a list of all the people I’ve contacted recently who may or may not call back while I’m gone for my coworker (want her to know what’s on my plate, after all!)
...Okay, I know that doesn’t look like it was a quiet day, but that credit card update call was pretty much the only one we had, and most of the rest was just looking at spreadsheets or old envelopes and messing around to look busy. *shrug* It’s a living! We’ll see what happens tomorrow, on my last work day of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike this week (as I don’t expect to have time to work out tomorrow what with all the last-minute prep), and last night with Ghostbusters II! Finished off the movie tonight, going from the boys getting committed to the big old climax where they walk the Statue of Liberty through the streets to get enough positive energy to smash open the slime shell covering the art museum where Vigo the Carpathian is attempting to possess baby Oscar. ...these are weird movies. XD But it was a very fun ride – while I agree the original is probably a better movie overall, this is not a bad sequel by any means, and I much prefer Peter being less of a jerk and Louis being less of a creep in this one. And come on, how can you not love the Statue of Liberty strolling through downtown New York to the song “Higher and Higher?” :D Looking forward to rewatching Ghostbusters (2016) once we’re back from vacation!
2. Update my BG3 Master Doc with some playthrough progression notes: Check – I ended up going through all the posts I tagged with “bg3 warlock smiler run” over here yesterday and copying all the relevant BG3 text into the master doc, then started editing it all down into an easier-to-digest list of stuff that’s happened to Tav!Smiler so far. *nods* I made it through my very first proper playsession today (exploring the Nautiloid, saving Us, meeting Lae’zel, fighting the imps, and saving Shadowheart) – dunno if I’ll be able to get any further tomorrow, but we’ll see! All least now all the raw data is in there for me to use at my leisure...
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – headed over to OXtra to watch one of the latest list videos tonight: “7 Impossible Puzzles You Had to Solve in the Stupid Real World!” Ellen and Jane talking about those games that forced you to use real-world items to solve in-game puzzles! Which included:
A) Classic “copy protection” puzzles that couldn’t be solved if you didn’t have the correct “feelies” with your copy of the game (such as Star Tropics on the NES including a letter from your in-game uncle that you had to wet to discover a radio frequency to contact him on mid-adventure – the Wii re-release included a digital copy of a pre-dampened letter for you to look at, the Switch re-release did not)
B) More modern puzzles requiring you to do some ARG-style shit to make sense of what was happening in the game (such as Infamous Second Son and its Paper Trail DLC, which originally forced you to head to another website to check out the evidence you gathered from various crime scenes in the DLC and figure out how to solve the puzzles there – the website went down in 2018, but fortunately the company behind the game tweaked the DLC so it was entirely solvable in-game...though they did provide some hints, which also no longer exist on the interwebs)
C) And puzzles that are both so tricksy and so numerous that the game outright tells you “look, you’re gonna want to take real world notes here, so get a notepad and a pen before you go further” (such as The Blue Prince, which is about a shape-shifting mansion whose rooms are full of puzzles that change depending on where in the mansion they appear, so – yeah. Keeping good notes is kind of essential!
Bottom line – if you’re using your video games for escapism, try to make sure they’re not the kind that make you look at actual physical objects to solve puzzles. Or go on Twitter – that’s just ASKING for trouble.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check plus, as I ended up both queuing and straight-up reblogging some stuff on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight –
A) First, we had the mini-reblogging spree, with me grabbing a trio of posts from my friend Satirical Demon’s blog:
I. A thread about the “National Public Data” site, one of those sites for finding people, which disappeared for a while after a nasty security breach scandal (exposing the personal info of three billion people), but which has returned! And is apparently owned by the sketchy-sounding “Perfect Privacy LLC.” OP ralfmaximus wanted to make people aware of its return and how to get your info off it – I actually couldn’t find myself on it (lucky), but I figured making other people aware so they could try and get their info off it would be a good thing!
II. A thread about another public comment period for another stupid idea from our government – namely, rescinding the “2001 Roadless Rule” under the guise of helping protect “roadless” (generally forested) areas from wildfires and such – except we all know this administration cares not for conservation and this is so they can allow loggers into environmentally-important forested areas to strip the hell out of them. >( The original poster, sandcheeze13, was like “this is gonna gut the national parks for more paper,” but fortunately someone who actually works with the National Parks Service reblogged and said “no, the national parks are safe, we’re under the Department of Agriculture and thus subject to different laws.” Which is some comfort, but still! I figured it was my duty to spread the word for all the other trees being affected. The comment period is short, but you have until the 19th – Go here to say something if you are so inclined!
III. And a post by kevinbparry – who does various cool stop-motion and magic-based videos online – featuring a montage video of all his most popular videos from the past ten years! Including things like a wizard grumpily making his bed magically, Kevin doing a variety of silly walks on a treadmill, and Kevin demonstrating ten different types of magic for the audience. He commented that he just started doing the videos for fun and never thought he could make a career out of them, but he was so full of ideas that he just couldn’t stop making them. And at least one is always really well-received, so… He’s very happy that he gets to have an amazing job doing what he loves now. :) We’re very happy to have you here, Kevin! You make some really neat stuff! :D
B) And then we had me at least starting my post for Song Saturday – a link post celebrating the album of Unofficial Blades In The Dark music I bought last Friday! Which is by Bradley Owens/Sydney Fabel – I’m not sure what name he’s going by these days. ^^; (Sydney APPEARS to be a persona Bradley invented for an album he made with his band The Blam Blams, but given he’s using it on stuff like his YouTube channel…) I didn’t quite finish it, but I got the link in (which automatically turned into an embedded mini-music player for sampling the album – nice), a quick paragraph about where I first found the music (YouTube) and how much I like it, and a few tags. I’ll have to finish it off tomorrow, but at least it’s in the queue for Saturday!
*nods* Not too shabby for a Wednesday...though I have once again stayed up waaay too late, so I have to get to bed now. *shakehead* Hopefully tomorrow goes smoothly! Night all!
Work – Fairly quiet Wednesday at work, overall –
A) I did the morning credit card reports (no problems getting into the website today, yay)
B) I looked at the latest report of people with pledge overpayments and one-time-gifts credited to the wrong campaign, called those who needed calling, and fixed the other gifts as necessary (somebody overpaid a pledge by a DOLLAR, sheesh)
C) I finished off the obituaries from Sunday and did some other related roster maintenance
D) I updated someone’s credit card with them over the phone
E) I went through some returned mail, which resulted in me discarding two pieces (including a thank-you letter from June that just kept coming back) and writing off a pledge in response to the third (capital campaign, donors haven’t paid since 2022)
F) I had the check-in meeting with the credit card people – no updates on any of our problems as usual, though I was able to get my contact to actually update the website to make sure that new gifts were coming in with 2026 CCA source codes (as that’s what they have to go under now) – fucking hooray
G) And I started typing up a list of all the people I’ve contacted recently who may or may not call back while I’m gone for my coworker (want her to know what’s on my plate, after all!)
...Okay, I know that doesn’t look like it was a quiet day, but that credit card update call was pretty much the only one we had, and most of the rest was just looking at spreadsheets or old envelopes and messing around to look busy. *shrug* It’s a living! We’ll see what happens tomorrow, on my last work day of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike this week (as I don’t expect to have time to work out tomorrow what with all the last-minute prep), and last night with Ghostbusters II! Finished off the movie tonight, going from the boys getting committed to the big old climax where they walk the Statue of Liberty through the streets to get enough positive energy to smash open the slime shell covering the art museum where Vigo the Carpathian is attempting to possess baby Oscar. ...these are weird movies. XD But it was a very fun ride – while I agree the original is probably a better movie overall, this is not a bad sequel by any means, and I much prefer Peter being less of a jerk and Louis being less of a creep in this one. And come on, how can you not love the Statue of Liberty strolling through downtown New York to the song “Higher and Higher?” :D Looking forward to rewatching Ghostbusters (2016) once we’re back from vacation!
2. Update my BG3 Master Doc with some playthrough progression notes: Check – I ended up going through all the posts I tagged with “bg3 warlock smiler run” over here yesterday and copying all the relevant BG3 text into the master doc, then started editing it all down into an easier-to-digest list of stuff that’s happened to Tav!Smiler so far. *nods* I made it through my very first proper playsession today (exploring the Nautiloid, saving Us, meeting Lae’zel, fighting the imps, and saving Shadowheart) – dunno if I’ll be able to get any further tomorrow, but we’ll see! All least now all the raw data is in there for me to use at my leisure...
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – headed over to OXtra to watch one of the latest list videos tonight: “7 Impossible Puzzles You Had to Solve in the Stupid Real World!” Ellen and Jane talking about those games that forced you to use real-world items to solve in-game puzzles! Which included:
A) Classic “copy protection” puzzles that couldn’t be solved if you didn’t have the correct “feelies” with your copy of the game (such as Star Tropics on the NES including a letter from your in-game uncle that you had to wet to discover a radio frequency to contact him on mid-adventure – the Wii re-release included a digital copy of a pre-dampened letter for you to look at, the Switch re-release did not)
B) More modern puzzles requiring you to do some ARG-style shit to make sense of what was happening in the game (such as Infamous Second Son and its Paper Trail DLC, which originally forced you to head to another website to check out the evidence you gathered from various crime scenes in the DLC and figure out how to solve the puzzles there – the website went down in 2018, but fortunately the company behind the game tweaked the DLC so it was entirely solvable in-game...though they did provide some hints, which also no longer exist on the interwebs)
C) And puzzles that are both so tricksy and so numerous that the game outright tells you “look, you’re gonna want to take real world notes here, so get a notepad and a pen before you go further” (such as The Blue Prince, which is about a shape-shifting mansion whose rooms are full of puzzles that change depending on where in the mansion they appear, so – yeah. Keeping good notes is kind of essential!
Bottom line – if you’re using your video games for escapism, try to make sure they’re not the kind that make you look at actual physical objects to solve puzzles. Or go on Twitter – that’s just ASKING for trouble.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check plus, as I ended up both queuing and straight-up reblogging some stuff on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight –
A) First, we had the mini-reblogging spree, with me grabbing a trio of posts from my friend Satirical Demon’s blog:
I. A thread about the “National Public Data” site, one of those sites for finding people, which disappeared for a while after a nasty security breach scandal (exposing the personal info of three billion people), but which has returned! And is apparently owned by the sketchy-sounding “Perfect Privacy LLC.” OP ralfmaximus wanted to make people aware of its return and how to get your info off it – I actually couldn’t find myself on it (lucky), but I figured making other people aware so they could try and get their info off it would be a good thing!
II. A thread about another public comment period for another stupid idea from our government – namely, rescinding the “2001 Roadless Rule” under the guise of helping protect “roadless” (generally forested) areas from wildfires and such – except we all know this administration cares not for conservation and this is so they can allow loggers into environmentally-important forested areas to strip the hell out of them. >( The original poster, sandcheeze13, was like “this is gonna gut the national parks for more paper,” but fortunately someone who actually works with the National Parks Service reblogged and said “no, the national parks are safe, we’re under the Department of Agriculture and thus subject to different laws.” Which is some comfort, but still! I figured it was my duty to spread the word for all the other trees being affected. The comment period is short, but you have until the 19th – Go here to say something if you are so inclined!
III. And a post by kevinbparry – who does various cool stop-motion and magic-based videos online – featuring a montage video of all his most popular videos from the past ten years! Including things like a wizard grumpily making his bed magically, Kevin doing a variety of silly walks on a treadmill, and Kevin demonstrating ten different types of magic for the audience. He commented that he just started doing the videos for fun and never thought he could make a career out of them, but he was so full of ideas that he just couldn’t stop making them. And at least one is always really well-received, so… He’s very happy that he gets to have an amazing job doing what he loves now. :) We’re very happy to have you here, Kevin! You make some really neat stuff! :D
B) And then we had me at least starting my post for Song Saturday – a link post celebrating the album of Unofficial Blades In The Dark music I bought last Friday! Which is by Bradley Owens/Sydney Fabel – I’m not sure what name he’s going by these days. ^^; (Sydney APPEARS to be a persona Bradley invented for an album he made with his band The Blam Blams, but given he’s using it on stuff like his YouTube channel…) I didn’t quite finish it, but I got the link in (which automatically turned into an embedded mini-music player for sampling the album – nice), a quick paragraph about where I first found the music (YouTube) and how much I like it, and a few tags. I’ll have to finish it off tomorrow, but at least it’s in the queue for Saturday!
*nods* Not too shabby for a Wednesday...though I have once again stayed up waaay too late, so I have to get to bed now. *shakehead* Hopefully tomorrow goes smoothly! Night all!
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Date: 2025-09-11 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-12 12:12 am (UTC)Ooh, btw, remember one of the last games Helloween played on his channel before he went into retirement -- Eternal Darkness? My favorite horror game and the only one I'll play. One of the voice actors, Jennifer Hale, is going to be at NY Comic Con this year; she voiced the main character Alex, and one of the voices of Xel'lotath. If I can find my copy of the game I'm gonna have her sign it, but if I can't I bought a strategy guide (admittedly one I probably already own but if I can't find the game I probably won't find the guide either and buying a guide for a 23-year-old game is cheaper than trying to buy the game itself) for that purpose.
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Date: 2025-09-12 12:33 am (UTC)Yeah, I do! That was a good game, very creepy. *nods* And oooh, that's neat! I hope you can find the game itself, but I'm glad you've got a back-up plan in the strategy guide! :)
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Date: 2025-09-12 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-20 03:39 am (UTC)