Whoops, Nearly Missed This
Feb. 5th, 2026 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWhich is ironic, because the reason I nearly missed updating is because I was working on the update in a separate doc. XD But yes, before I skip a day in my journaling, here's the write-up of how my day went:
Work – Well, my workday was pretty much just fine – I spent most of the day working on the various spreadsheets we had of people who had overpaid on last year’s Appeal pledges, figuring out who needed to be contacted (shooting off some e-mails and calling some people – all of which so far have said “keep the money,” so yay) and who had money that needed to be moved, with a few interruptions to help with some credit card stuff (one lady making a gift and two credit card updates). Nothing spectacular, but nothing too stressful either, which is good for a Thursday.
...as for my commutes, however – ugh. The morning one consisted of a slow crawl up the highway with someone riding my ass for a good portion of it, then another guy nearly hitting me trying to get into my lane because he was on his phone instead of driving, while the evening one consisted of an okay ride along the highway, but then the world’s slowest fucking crawl down the main drag at home, while also dealing with some nasty sun glare. Extremely frustrating. *sigh* I hate driving, I really do...but I still have one more day to get through, so I must persevere. Hopefully Friday’s commutes won’t be quite as miserable!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – continued pedaling my way through The Adventures Of Useless Steve tonight, covering –
A) The end of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” AKA “the episode where Useless Steve dies a lot.” XD The last fourteen-odd minutes of which featured:
I. Useless Steve and Arcade Gannon escaping the cave of horrible nightstalker death, bringing the chewed Stealth Boy back to Dr. Henry, convincing local Nightkin Lily (who is another potential companion) to help Dr. Henry with an experiment involving it, talking down another Nightkin who burst in to protest partway through (Steve putting on his finest leopard print pajamas and reading one of his dwindling supplies of “Meeting People” to make the check), and finally encouraging Dr. Henry to continue testing on Lily, because apparently if you can’t make the Science check to help him have a breakthrough, that does give Jacobstown a bit of a better ending. And then, finally, recruiting him for the Enclave Remnants Reunion. Yay!
II. Useless Steve then swinging by Mick & Ralph’s to get himself a new toy – the grenade machinegun (a version of the grenade rifle that is absurdly heavy but shoots grenades very vast) – to go with some pulse grenade ammo of the correct size that he bought earlier, then swinging by the Remnant’s bunker to talk to all the people he gathered and explain that he needed them to help support the NCR in the upcoming battle of Hoover Dam. Most of them were okay with this, but one, Orion Moreno, was not. And he was willing to lock everyone in, kill Steve and Arcade, and then talk his fellow former Enclave soldiers out of the plan. Normally, Jon talks this guy down with his characters’ incredible power of Speech, but he decided in Useless Steve’s run that it would be much more interesting and fun to kill the guy, and had Useless Steve attack.
III. Useless Steve and Arcade then dying SO MANY TIMES because as it turns out, those pulse grenades Steve bought to disable Orion’s power armor were just NOT doing the job (especially since Orion kept healing himself) and Arcade kept getting on the wrong end of Orion’s gatling laser. Seriously, you thought the nightstalker cave was bad? At least there it looked like the boys had a chance! The pain only stopped when Jon had Useless Steve focus on disarming Orion, and then grabbed his gun before he could pick it up. Depriving Orion of his laser seemed to deprive him of his will to live as well, and the pair FINALLY took him down.
IV. And Useless Steve finally receiving his reward for all this nonsense – power armor training from the remaining members of the Remnants (since, you know, they’re big on the stuff too), and the Gannon Family Tesla Power Armor from Arcade! Which had a solid DT of 26 and was Medium armor so it didn’t make Steve’s terrible stealth even more terrible. Useless Steve didn’t put on the associated helmet, though – he much preferred to keep wearing Easy Pete’s terrible hat. Jon was very amused by the armor/hat combo. XD
B) And the beginning of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 7 - Taking Out The Trash!” AKA “the one where Useless Steve actually starts working toward the endgame.” The first eighteen-odd minutes of which featured:
I. Useless Steve kicking off Act II of the game by agreeing to help the NCR get the Boomers at Nellis on their side, then showing off how to absolutely cheese the quest to make the Boomers like you, “Volare!” by simply giving Jack (the guy with the crush on the Crimson Caravan lady) loads and loads of scrap metal. Some of which can be stolen from the very room he’s sitting in. XD Because what matters isn’t genuinely helping the Boomers with all their side quests – what matters is getting up to “Idolized” reputation with them, and every bit of scrap metal the Courier hands to Jack allows them to pick up some Boomers fame. So Useless Steve taking a moment to hunt down scrap metal in Novac and the nearby REPCONN testing site led to him getting “Idolized” without having to interact with any of the side quests (well, except for the one where you help in the medical tent, but that was just to show off a Low Intelligence interaction), allowing him to progress the quest and get the Boomers on-side despite being an idiot who refused to get involved in their business. :p
II. Useless Steve then taking a moment to show off how this same technique – give something to somebody who will give you fame with their respective faction for each item – works even with the bigger factions by going to McCarran and pickpocketing a few NCR dogtags off the people there (which was able to do since the tags were technically weightless and thus the game gave him the highest chance of getting them successfully, 85%, despite his abysmal Sneak), demonstrating how you can turn those into Quartermaster Mayes at Camp Forlorn Hope for some NCR fame, or Aurelius of Phoenix at The Fort for some Legion fame (Useless Steve actually got Accepted by the Legion for doing so). Though Jon made sure to warn that getting too chummy with the Legion, even by this method, would make Boone and Arcade refuse to work with you, so – don’t be TOO free with the dogtags! (Unless you don’t plan to travel with companions, of course.)
III. Useless Steve then finishing “Volare!” by raising the bomber from Lake Mead for the Boomers – a process that involved:
a. Robbing a couple of citizens back in Goodsprings of their pressure cooker, as Steve definitely did not have the science to get the rebreather off Jack immediately and thus had to get some parts for it (wearing the completed product gives Steve +3% damage resistance but also makes him look like a supervillain XD)
b. Heading to Camp Golf to take the easy way to the wreck by jumping over the pipe and the sandbag wall at the edge of camp and swimming there
c. Attempting to raid the Scavenger’s Platform for another Wasteland Survival Guide, only to get killed a LOT by the lakelurks that had chosen to make it their home; after getting murdered a few times, Steve made the decision to leave the place alone
d. Finding the plane and attaching the ballast, then checking out the cave behind it which contains the mortal remains of a tourist with a suitcase full of money and his car. Jon has NO IDEA how the guy ended up in there, but gladly had Steve take all his pre-War money and whatnot XD
e. Raising the plane from the depths, reporting back to Pearl, getting her and her Boomers to back him at the upcoming battle (Jon found it odd you couldn’t specify what faction they were supposed to help, even though he knows why the developers left it vague – so people could change their minds if they want before the big finale), and leveling up to Level 16! Which saw him bring Speech up to 70 and Sneak up to 32, and take the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk to do +10% damage against male opponents, which would be very useful against all those male Legionnaires he would have to fight at Hoover Dam! So yeah, guess Steve is canonically gay now. All righty then. :p
IV. And Useless Steve then quickly stealing the transfer order from Pearl’s file cabinet that proves the pulse gun (one of the bits of tech Veronica wanted earlier) was in Vault 34, which – he may be doing. Jon hasn’t decided yet whether or not it’s a guaranteed death sentence. We’ll find out soon, I suppose!
Another excellent look at the world of Useless Steve. XD Tomorrow, we should finish off Episode 7 and Steve’s attempt to make friends with The Kings!
2. Start final edits on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – though I didn’t get as much as I might have liked done, due to getting a little distracted right after supper looking at someone’s Baldur’s Gate III comics (featuring Wyll Ravengard and their tiefling Tav), then having some trouble uploading the Chapter 3 .odt file to FF.net’s Document Manager (took me three tries to make it go through!), then getting interrupted near the end of my editing session by poor Dad having a really bad painful moment. :( But I still managed to cover from Smiler asking Alice if they could move in with her to Smiler and Alice changing into the Van Dort livery to pretend to be new servants, talking about how poorly Victor took Barry’s comments about them earlier. Which, according to the scrollbar, IS about half the chapter, so – go me. *nods* We’ll see how far I manage to get tomorrow – would be nice to get this up this weekend if I could!
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – squeezed in some time to watch the latest OXBox list tonight: “7 Easter Eggs You Found By Doing Absolutely Nothing!” Andy, Mike, and Jane discussing – well, to be honest, mostly achievements you get by doing nothing, not Easter eggs. The title’s a bit of a misnomer. (Though given they were pretty sure most of the players of the games they were playing would not sit around doing nothing for any length of time, I guess they sort of count as a kind of Easter Egg. :P) Examples included:
A) The one true actual Easter Egg on the list – if you have Ezio stand motionless looking into the water after pulling the lever in the Assassin Tomb in Assassin’s Creed II for a full minute, a giant squid will swim by, head sack looking like a giant sinister brain! Pull the lever again after seeing it, and it’ll jumpscare you with a tentacle, just for fun. So popular they included another squid in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, where you can spot one tussling with a sperm whale while lingering by a window in one of the shipwrecks you can free dive into
B) An example of a game company giving you a trophy as a result of taking the piss out of them – if, in Uncharted 4, you have Nathan Drake stand completely motionless, staring at the crowd at the start of the city chase sequence (instead of running after your friend Sully) for thirty seconds, you’ll get awarded the achievement “Stage Fright!” Which is a reference to Nathan apparently getting a case of such when this part of the game was shown off at E3 2015 at the end of Sony’s big showcase – basically, the demo bugged out and Nathan refused to move, forcing them to have to restart it. XD Good to know developer Naughty Dog had a sense of humor about the whole thing!
C) And an achievement that LOOKS like a solemn remembrance but guys I think it’s actually an internet meme – if you send Batman down Crime Alley in Batman: Arkham City and then have him kneel down by the chalk outlines of his long-dead parents that he finds there (don’t ask me if they’re real or just in Batman’s head, that was not specified) for a full minute, you will get a trophy called “Pay Your Respects,” complete with the camera solemnly circling the scene. Which seems like a nice way to reward players for taking a moment to acknowledge the defining moment in Bruce Wayne’s life –
Except. In the gameplay footage provided for this sequence, I saw what key you have to press to trigger the crouch. And it’s fucking F. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, some war game (I’m pretty sure it was an entry in the Call Of Duty franchise) had you attend a buddy’s funeral at one point, and you were prompted to press F to pay your respects. This of course immediately became a meme in some circles of the internet, and I refuse to believe that the people behind Arkham City didn’t know about it and made you press F DELIBERATELY. Meaning this ISN’T a solemn remembrance of the Waynes, this is the game getting you to recreate the meme on its own terms. *shakes head* Shameful. But hey, worth a trophy. XD
So yeah – sometimes, you can earn something fun or see something interesting if you just stay still in a video game for a while! And at the very least, while you’re waiting to see if anything happens, you can get a snack. Always good, snacks.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check, I’m glad to say –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, after some dedicated searching, I finally found the Song Saturday post I was looking for – “People Like Us” by Kelly Clarkson! AKA one of my top tier Valicer In The Dark songs. :) Felt it was appropriate to bring that back in honor of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” getting final edits (especially since I’d never reblogged it before), so into the queue it went!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to toss into my queue, consisting of: “You girls better be careful this Galentine's Day! This year it's on Friday the 13th.” After considering my options, I decided to brush the dust off the Technicolor Phase verse and have the Alice, Victoria, and Emily of that world respond –
With utter confusion, because of course they’ve never heard of this holiday. XD Emily was able to parse that it had something to do with Valentine’s, but other than that… I ended things on Alice declaring that, if anyone did try to cause trouble on that day, the three of them plus Victor should be able to take them. XD Fun stuff!
...and I absolutely HAVE to go to bed, so I'll fix the spacing tomorrow. ^^; Night all! EDIT 2/6/2026: Spacing added, feel free to read the now much more readable entry!
Work – Well, my workday was pretty much just fine – I spent most of the day working on the various spreadsheets we had of people who had overpaid on last year’s Appeal pledges, figuring out who needed to be contacted (shooting off some e-mails and calling some people – all of which so far have said “keep the money,” so yay) and who had money that needed to be moved, with a few interruptions to help with some credit card stuff (one lady making a gift and two credit card updates). Nothing spectacular, but nothing too stressful either, which is good for a Thursday.
...as for my commutes, however – ugh. The morning one consisted of a slow crawl up the highway with someone riding my ass for a good portion of it, then another guy nearly hitting me trying to get into my lane because he was on his phone instead of driving, while the evening one consisted of an okay ride along the highway, but then the world’s slowest fucking crawl down the main drag at home, while also dealing with some nasty sun glare. Extremely frustrating. *sigh* I hate driving, I really do...but I still have one more day to get through, so I must persevere. Hopefully Friday’s commutes won’t be quite as miserable!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – continued pedaling my way through The Adventures Of Useless Steve tonight, covering –
A) The end of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” AKA “the episode where Useless Steve dies a lot.” XD The last fourteen-odd minutes of which featured:
I. Useless Steve and Arcade Gannon escaping the cave of horrible nightstalker death, bringing the chewed Stealth Boy back to Dr. Henry, convincing local Nightkin Lily (who is another potential companion) to help Dr. Henry with an experiment involving it, talking down another Nightkin who burst in to protest partway through (Steve putting on his finest leopard print pajamas and reading one of his dwindling supplies of “Meeting People” to make the check), and finally encouraging Dr. Henry to continue testing on Lily, because apparently if you can’t make the Science check to help him have a breakthrough, that does give Jacobstown a bit of a better ending. And then, finally, recruiting him for the Enclave Remnants Reunion. Yay!
II. Useless Steve then swinging by Mick & Ralph’s to get himself a new toy – the grenade machinegun (a version of the grenade rifle that is absurdly heavy but shoots grenades very vast) – to go with some pulse grenade ammo of the correct size that he bought earlier, then swinging by the Remnant’s bunker to talk to all the people he gathered and explain that he needed them to help support the NCR in the upcoming battle of Hoover Dam. Most of them were okay with this, but one, Orion Moreno, was not. And he was willing to lock everyone in, kill Steve and Arcade, and then talk his fellow former Enclave soldiers out of the plan. Normally, Jon talks this guy down with his characters’ incredible power of Speech, but he decided in Useless Steve’s run that it would be much more interesting and fun to kill the guy, and had Useless Steve attack.
III. Useless Steve and Arcade then dying SO MANY TIMES because as it turns out, those pulse grenades Steve bought to disable Orion’s power armor were just NOT doing the job (especially since Orion kept healing himself) and Arcade kept getting on the wrong end of Orion’s gatling laser. Seriously, you thought the nightstalker cave was bad? At least there it looked like the boys had a chance! The pain only stopped when Jon had Useless Steve focus on disarming Orion, and then grabbed his gun before he could pick it up. Depriving Orion of his laser seemed to deprive him of his will to live as well, and the pair FINALLY took him down.
IV. And Useless Steve finally receiving his reward for all this nonsense – power armor training from the remaining members of the Remnants (since, you know, they’re big on the stuff too), and the Gannon Family Tesla Power Armor from Arcade! Which had a solid DT of 26 and was Medium armor so it didn’t make Steve’s terrible stealth even more terrible. Useless Steve didn’t put on the associated helmet, though – he much preferred to keep wearing Easy Pete’s terrible hat. Jon was very amused by the armor/hat combo. XD
B) And the beginning of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 7 - Taking Out The Trash!” AKA “the one where Useless Steve actually starts working toward the endgame.” The first eighteen-odd minutes of which featured:
I. Useless Steve kicking off Act II of the game by agreeing to help the NCR get the Boomers at Nellis on their side, then showing off how to absolutely cheese the quest to make the Boomers like you, “Volare!” by simply giving Jack (the guy with the crush on the Crimson Caravan lady) loads and loads of scrap metal. Some of which can be stolen from the very room he’s sitting in. XD Because what matters isn’t genuinely helping the Boomers with all their side quests – what matters is getting up to “Idolized” reputation with them, and every bit of scrap metal the Courier hands to Jack allows them to pick up some Boomers fame. So Useless Steve taking a moment to hunt down scrap metal in Novac and the nearby REPCONN testing site led to him getting “Idolized” without having to interact with any of the side quests (well, except for the one where you help in the medical tent, but that was just to show off a Low Intelligence interaction), allowing him to progress the quest and get the Boomers on-side despite being an idiot who refused to get involved in their business. :p
II. Useless Steve then taking a moment to show off how this same technique – give something to somebody who will give you fame with their respective faction for each item – works even with the bigger factions by going to McCarran and pickpocketing a few NCR dogtags off the people there (which was able to do since the tags were technically weightless and thus the game gave him the highest chance of getting them successfully, 85%, despite his abysmal Sneak), demonstrating how you can turn those into Quartermaster Mayes at Camp Forlorn Hope for some NCR fame, or Aurelius of Phoenix at The Fort for some Legion fame (Useless Steve actually got Accepted by the Legion for doing so). Though Jon made sure to warn that getting too chummy with the Legion, even by this method, would make Boone and Arcade refuse to work with you, so – don’t be TOO free with the dogtags! (Unless you don’t plan to travel with companions, of course.)
III. Useless Steve then finishing “Volare!” by raising the bomber from Lake Mead for the Boomers – a process that involved:
a. Robbing a couple of citizens back in Goodsprings of their pressure cooker, as Steve definitely did not have the science to get the rebreather off Jack immediately and thus had to get some parts for it (wearing the completed product gives Steve +3% damage resistance but also makes him look like a supervillain XD)
b. Heading to Camp Golf to take the easy way to the wreck by jumping over the pipe and the sandbag wall at the edge of camp and swimming there
c. Attempting to raid the Scavenger’s Platform for another Wasteland Survival Guide, only to get killed a LOT by the lakelurks that had chosen to make it their home; after getting murdered a few times, Steve made the decision to leave the place alone
d. Finding the plane and attaching the ballast, then checking out the cave behind it which contains the mortal remains of a tourist with a suitcase full of money and his car. Jon has NO IDEA how the guy ended up in there, but gladly had Steve take all his pre-War money and whatnot XD
e. Raising the plane from the depths, reporting back to Pearl, getting her and her Boomers to back him at the upcoming battle (Jon found it odd you couldn’t specify what faction they were supposed to help, even though he knows why the developers left it vague – so people could change their minds if they want before the big finale), and leveling up to Level 16! Which saw him bring Speech up to 70 and Sneak up to 32, and take the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk to do +10% damage against male opponents, which would be very useful against all those male Legionnaires he would have to fight at Hoover Dam! So yeah, guess Steve is canonically gay now. All righty then. :p
IV. And Useless Steve then quickly stealing the transfer order from Pearl’s file cabinet that proves the pulse gun (one of the bits of tech Veronica wanted earlier) was in Vault 34, which – he may be doing. Jon hasn’t decided yet whether or not it’s a guaranteed death sentence. We’ll find out soon, I suppose!
Another excellent look at the world of Useless Steve. XD Tomorrow, we should finish off Episode 7 and Steve’s attempt to make friends with The Kings!
2. Start final edits on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – though I didn’t get as much as I might have liked done, due to getting a little distracted right after supper looking at someone’s Baldur’s Gate III comics (featuring Wyll Ravengard and their tiefling Tav), then having some trouble uploading the Chapter 3 .odt file to FF.net’s Document Manager (took me three tries to make it go through!), then getting interrupted near the end of my editing session by poor Dad having a really bad painful moment. :( But I still managed to cover from Smiler asking Alice if they could move in with her to Smiler and Alice changing into the Van Dort livery to pretend to be new servants, talking about how poorly Victor took Barry’s comments about them earlier. Which, according to the scrollbar, IS about half the chapter, so – go me. *nods* We’ll see how far I manage to get tomorrow – would be nice to get this up this weekend if I could!
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – squeezed in some time to watch the latest OXBox list tonight: “7 Easter Eggs You Found By Doing Absolutely Nothing!” Andy, Mike, and Jane discussing – well, to be honest, mostly achievements you get by doing nothing, not Easter eggs. The title’s a bit of a misnomer. (Though given they were pretty sure most of the players of the games they were playing would not sit around doing nothing for any length of time, I guess they sort of count as a kind of Easter Egg. :P) Examples included:
A) The one true actual Easter Egg on the list – if you have Ezio stand motionless looking into the water after pulling the lever in the Assassin Tomb in Assassin’s Creed II for a full minute, a giant squid will swim by, head sack looking like a giant sinister brain! Pull the lever again after seeing it, and it’ll jumpscare you with a tentacle, just for fun. So popular they included another squid in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, where you can spot one tussling with a sperm whale while lingering by a window in one of the shipwrecks you can free dive into
B) An example of a game company giving you a trophy as a result of taking the piss out of them – if, in Uncharted 4, you have Nathan Drake stand completely motionless, staring at the crowd at the start of the city chase sequence (instead of running after your friend Sully) for thirty seconds, you’ll get awarded the achievement “Stage Fright!” Which is a reference to Nathan apparently getting a case of such when this part of the game was shown off at E3 2015 at the end of Sony’s big showcase – basically, the demo bugged out and Nathan refused to move, forcing them to have to restart it. XD Good to know developer Naughty Dog had a sense of humor about the whole thing!
C) And an achievement that LOOKS like a solemn remembrance but guys I think it’s actually an internet meme – if you send Batman down Crime Alley in Batman: Arkham City and then have him kneel down by the chalk outlines of his long-dead parents that he finds there (don’t ask me if they’re real or just in Batman’s head, that was not specified) for a full minute, you will get a trophy called “Pay Your Respects,” complete with the camera solemnly circling the scene. Which seems like a nice way to reward players for taking a moment to acknowledge the defining moment in Bruce Wayne’s life –
Except. In the gameplay footage provided for this sequence, I saw what key you have to press to trigger the crouch. And it’s fucking F. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, some war game (I’m pretty sure it was an entry in the Call Of Duty franchise) had you attend a buddy’s funeral at one point, and you were prompted to press F to pay your respects. This of course immediately became a meme in some circles of the internet, and I refuse to believe that the people behind Arkham City didn’t know about it and made you press F DELIBERATELY. Meaning this ISN’T a solemn remembrance of the Waynes, this is the game getting you to recreate the meme on its own terms. *shakes head* Shameful. But hey, worth a trophy. XD
So yeah – sometimes, you can earn something fun or see something interesting if you just stay still in a video game for a while! And at the very least, while you’re waiting to see if anything happens, you can get a snack. Always good, snacks.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check, I’m glad to say –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, after some dedicated searching, I finally found the Song Saturday post I was looking for – “People Like Us” by Kelly Clarkson! AKA one of my top tier Valicer In The Dark songs. :) Felt it was appropriate to bring that back in honor of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” getting final edits (especially since I’d never reblogged it before), so into the queue it went!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to toss into my queue, consisting of: “You girls better be careful this Galentine's Day! This year it's on Friday the 13th.” After considering my options, I decided to brush the dust off the Technicolor Phase verse and have the Alice, Victoria, and Emily of that world respond –
With utter confusion, because of course they’ve never heard of this holiday. XD Emily was able to parse that it had something to do with Valentine’s, but other than that… I ended things on Alice declaring that, if anyone did try to cause trouble on that day, the three of them plus Victor should be able to take them. XD Fun stuff!
...and I absolutely HAVE to go to bed, so I'll fix the spacing tomorrow. ^^; Night all! EDIT 2/6/2026: Spacing added, feel free to read the now much more readable entry!
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Date: 2026-02-06 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-07 04:52 am (UTC)