Quietly Productive Thursday
Mar. 12th, 2026 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAs my write-up should attest to:
Work – Welp, ended up having a pretty quiet and boring day at work overall –
A) I spent the morning finishing up the final obituaries in the set I grabbed a couple of days ago, along with doing a bit of roster maintenance and telling my coworker that “yes, I am aware that there are rejected direct debit gifts that need to be removed, I unfortunately cannot force the damn credit card company to get off their ass and do the reversal batch”
B) And I spent the afternoon going through a spreadsheet I pulled of failed online payments stretching back into mid-January (since obviously I wasn’t there to do it then) and checking to see which ones have already been retried and which ones haven’t, interrupted by a couple of phone calls (including someone looking to see how much their parish had raised, and one credit card pledge – no problems getting it to go through, fortunately)
*shrug* Yeah, that was pretty much it for the day. Can’t say I mind having a quiet day, especially since the busy ones now tend to be REALLY busy. My coworker’s out tomorrow, though, so I imagine I’ll have a BIT more to do then – we’ll see what happens at the end of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped on the bike tonight and started pedaling my way through “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 33 - Dead On Arrival!” The continuing adventures of everyone’s favorite drunken melee courier P. D. Shoot, which I wasn’t able to watch last Sunday because Jon was late uploading the video. *sigh* But I got the chance to catch up today, and I made the most of it, getting through:
A) P. D. Shoot leaving Hoover Dam (after dropping a “Meeting People” skill magazine outside on the main road, because she used one in the parallel universe where she completed the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, and thus the game, in favor of the NCR – Jon acknowledged it really didn’t make any difference because she wouldn’t be keeping any of her kit ANYWAY, but it was important to keep the multiverse in order, damn it) and heading to the Abandoned BOS Bunker to finally brave the horrors of “Dead Money!” Which involved showing off how “Dead Money” weirdly differs from the rest of the DLCs in how it starts – you see, once you enter the Abandoned Bunker and take in all the blood splatter and “Sierra Madre” written on the walls and the headless corpse on the floor, you go down the nearby stairs and are confronted with a door. Clicking this door triggers the “hey, you are about to start some DLC, you will not be able to return to the main game until you complete the quests in the DLC area, this is recommended for experienced Couriers only, are you sure you want to proceed?” warning that pops up whenever you try to start a DLC. Normally, clicking the “Yes, I’m sure I want to start the DLC” button immediately triggers your character getting pulled into the DLC and the opening slideshow for said DLC –
But in “Dead Money,” when you click that button, the door just opens, and you’re allowed to continue wandering around for a bit. P. D. in fact showed off that you can go to the side, hack a terminal, and check out Father Elijah’s old room, complete with a chemistry set you can interact with to make a jar of Cloud Residue (the Cloud being the super-toxic fog that surrounds the casino) and other such supplies you can pick up. It wasn’t until she approached the radio at the far end of the hall that she ended up gassed and kidnapped so the DLC proper could start! It was just a little odd to see after watching how the other DLCs started – but then again, “Dead Money” IS the first one they made, so maybe it makes sense that that one in particular would be a little weird.
B) P. D. Shoot waking up in the Sierra Madre after the opening titles (talking about how the casino was supposed to open with and prove a new beginning for all the rich and famous folk who got invitations...only for the War to put paid to THOSE plans) and being greeted by Father Elijah! Or, well, a hologram of him, informing her that she was going to do as he said or he’d set off her bomb collar and take her head clean off. P. D. naturally did not want that, so she elected to be polite and play along with his whims. She was thus tasked with finding three other people with bomb collars and bringing them to the central plaza – Christine, Dean, and “Dog.” P. D. was amenable to this, at least for the moment, but had to ask what had happened to her stuff –
Prompting Elijah to confess that that actually wasn’t his doing – the casino had automated security that whisked away anything that had the slightest bit of radiation on it (and wasn’t a quest item, or part of P. D.’s body) and took it to “the bunker.” And he hadn’t been able to hack the systems to stop this. Fortunately for P. D., he’d provided her with a jumpsuit and a weapon –
Unfortunately for P. D., said jumpsuit was not armor (meaning it wouldn’t reduce any incoming damage if she ran into trouble), and said weapon was a holorifle – aka a gun. The one type of weapon she wasn’t allowed to use. *shakehead* Very helpful, Elijah. But at least showing off that bit of conversation helped explain Jon’s reluctance at smuggling in items via exploits – there were lore reasons she had nothing on her, damn it!
C) P. D. Shoot taking stock of what she had on her person (which wasn’t much, as you might expect – and while she did still have the rebreather that she got as part of the quest to make friends with the Boomers, which WOULD have given her 3 DT and thus a bit of protection, Jon decided it counted as a “smuggled quest item” exploit and refused to have her put it on. *shakehead* Oh Jon...he was willing to use her camera as an impromptu zoom feature/binoculars, at least!) and deciding that, while she was still very capable of stealthing around the place (as naturally none of her skills or perks had changed), she needed to get herself some appropriate weaponry and FAST. Cue her starting a trip around the outer courtyard areas of the Sierra Madre, grabbing herself a “Cosmic Knife” and whatever other goodies she could find as she wandered (including bobby pins, a lead pipe out of an emergency fire hose box, bits of cloud residue to make poison out of later, and some lovely Abraxo Cleaner) –
And then. Right after finding the entrance to “Puesta Del Sol” (which she couldn’t go in yet because she didn’t have her fellow captives), and immediately after Jon remembering “oh yeah, going into a DLC heals you, I’d better knock her health back down to what it should be,” and even more immediately after him remarking that her health probably wasn’t going to stay at 219 HP for very long, P. D. stepped into a side area off the main path, collected some more cloud residue, and started scurrying off to the side in search of more goodies –
Only to suddenly let out a cry of pain. Cue Jon stopping her in her tracks, looking around in brief bafflement – and then spotting behind her a sprung bear trap. Which he hadn’t noticed because it was a brownish-red, and thanks to The Cloud, everything in this DLC, at least outside, is a brownish-red. And then he looked at her health –
Revealing she was down to 174 HP. Which – he said she’d lost like 30-odd points, but I’m pretty sure she actually lost 45 HP there. As you might imagine, Jon took the opportunity to admit that he now seriously regretted taking Bloody Mess (which granted P. D. a flat +5% damage to all her weapons and made some enemies explode into bloody chunks) over Light Step (which would have granted P. D. immunity to all floor-based traps and explosives) and trusting in his ability to remember where all the traps were. *shakehead* We tried to warn you, Jon!
D) P. D. Shoot doing her best to shake that off (while Jon sarcastically called himself a “genius” and generally grumbled about his bad luck) and continuing her looting adventures! Which involved:
I. Picking up every freaking Sierra Madre chip she could find (on floors, in fountains, in containers – if it was a Sierra Madre chip, she was HAVING it) for later use in the vending machines
II. Discovering and looting one of Dean’s Secret Stashes for goodies (Dean being one of the people she was tasked with finding – hopefully he will not be annoyed with her for that), including a spare Cosmic Knife to repair her own with
III. Grabbing a Knife Spear out of a skeleton by another fountain full of Sierra Madre chips – these are the signature weapons of the Ghost People (who are essentially Discount Necromorphs from Dead Space – they’re properly humanoid, no obvious body horror, but they too must be killed by targeting their limbs – otherwise they’ll just get up again, even if you drain all their health) who populate the casino, and P. D. fully intends to use them against their masters as her new “first strike” weapon (aka the one she’ll be using to get the sneak attack critical before swapping to the faster Cosmic Knife to finish them off)
IV. Retracing her steps back to the main plaza after getting her goodies and tracking down her first radroach (which she easily slaughtered), the vending machine code to “return outfit item” in a shop run by one of the few friendly holograms in the DLC (which allows her to give clothes to vending machines in exchange for chips – and lucky here, there were some pre-War outfits in a suitcase tucked in the corner), and a hot plate in an old room that allowed her to turn some of her gathered Abraxo and Cloud residue into weak “Cloud Kiss” poison to rub all over her Knife Spear. Because poison is going to be USEFUL in this DLC, damn it
V. And, as per the above, fighting her first Ghost Person! Not the one that the game expects you to fight first, amusingly enough (which was in the area where she got her first Knife Spear), but the one in the Residential District blocking her access to the first workbench you can find in the game. Basically, the strat was poison the Knife Spear; do some Turbo via Implant GRX; jab the Knife Spear right up the Ghost Person’s behind; swap to the Cosmic Knife and start wailing on said Ghost Person until a limb was crippled, causing them to explode into giblets (hopefully not damaging poor P. D. further). *nods* I mean, the Ghost Person went down no problems, so you can’t argue with results! And she was able to loot the body for both regular and throwing knife spears to maintain her own, so that was good too. :D
E) P. D. Shoot then using the workbench to clean her Cosmic Knife, granting her the Cosmic Knife (Clean) with a shinier blade, full condition, better damage, and a bonus to crit chance as well as a bonus to limb damage (who knew Abraxo was so powerful?), then testing it out on an unfortunate radroach around the corner before making her way BACK to the original Ghost Person she saw to slaughter them. She ended up hitting him so hard with the knife spear that he slid straight through a nearby archway, forcing her to chase him a bit to slash him up with her new shiny knife. XD But slash him up she did, before collecting all the chips out of the nearby fountain, because chips good.
And that’s where I left things off, with P. D. considering her next move as she worked her way through the starting areas of the DLC! Tomorrow, we’ll see how she handles whatever other enemies there may be in her way – and if she walks into any more traps. I’m hoping not, because I would like Jon to be able to properly complete the YOLO run – but honestly, if he dies to bear traps or floor mines here in “Dead Money,” it will feel a bit karmic. We told you to take Light Step, Jon!
2. Post Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – took me a half-hour to get all the notes and suchlike sorted, but it is indeed up! Please feel free to peruse it at your leisure. I hope you all enjoy! :D
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – are you that surprised, given how long my write-ups take? *sigh* Well, I’ve got a long weekend coming up, so hopefully I can catch up then.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse (as per usual), but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I got two key things done:
A) First, I made a post advertising the latest chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy” going up – couldn’t do a proper “link” post as those didn’t seem to be working again, so I settled for a text post with a link in it (“link” posts have a big ass-link at the top you can click, if you were wondering what the difference is) – we’ll see if anyone notices!
B) And second, I got my Song Saturday post sorted, queuing up a reblog of my post featuring an extended version of the Dishonored 2 main theme! Because – as I said in my original post and my tags this time around – that theme always makes me think about what the potential opening title sequence to a hypothetical Valicer In The Dark TV show would look like. And I hadn’t reblogged it yet, so – yeah. Perfect song to cap off a week where I posted another chapter of a VITD story!
Not too shabby! Yes, I'm a little annoyed I didn't have time for a YouTube video, but at the same time I'm glad I got my VLA(NS) queue sorted and my new chapter up and all that, so -- can't be TOO mad. But now it is time for me to go to bed, as I still have to get through Friday (the 13th). Night all!
Work – Welp, ended up having a pretty quiet and boring day at work overall –
A) I spent the morning finishing up the final obituaries in the set I grabbed a couple of days ago, along with doing a bit of roster maintenance and telling my coworker that “yes, I am aware that there are rejected direct debit gifts that need to be removed, I unfortunately cannot force the damn credit card company to get off their ass and do the reversal batch”
B) And I spent the afternoon going through a spreadsheet I pulled of failed online payments stretching back into mid-January (since obviously I wasn’t there to do it then) and checking to see which ones have already been retried and which ones haven’t, interrupted by a couple of phone calls (including someone looking to see how much their parish had raised, and one credit card pledge – no problems getting it to go through, fortunately)
*shrug* Yeah, that was pretty much it for the day. Can’t say I mind having a quiet day, especially since the busy ones now tend to be REALLY busy. My coworker’s out tomorrow, though, so I imagine I’ll have a BIT more to do then – we’ll see what happens at the end of the week!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped on the bike tonight and started pedaling my way through “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 33 - Dead On Arrival!” The continuing adventures of everyone’s favorite drunken melee courier P. D. Shoot, which I wasn’t able to watch last Sunday because Jon was late uploading the video. *sigh* But I got the chance to catch up today, and I made the most of it, getting through:
A) P. D. Shoot leaving Hoover Dam (after dropping a “Meeting People” skill magazine outside on the main road, because she used one in the parallel universe where she completed the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, and thus the game, in favor of the NCR – Jon acknowledged it really didn’t make any difference because she wouldn’t be keeping any of her kit ANYWAY, but it was important to keep the multiverse in order, damn it) and heading to the Abandoned BOS Bunker to finally brave the horrors of “Dead Money!” Which involved showing off how “Dead Money” weirdly differs from the rest of the DLCs in how it starts – you see, once you enter the Abandoned Bunker and take in all the blood splatter and “Sierra Madre” written on the walls and the headless corpse on the floor, you go down the nearby stairs and are confronted with a door. Clicking this door triggers the “hey, you are about to start some DLC, you will not be able to return to the main game until you complete the quests in the DLC area, this is recommended for experienced Couriers only, are you sure you want to proceed?” warning that pops up whenever you try to start a DLC. Normally, clicking the “Yes, I’m sure I want to start the DLC” button immediately triggers your character getting pulled into the DLC and the opening slideshow for said DLC –
But in “Dead Money,” when you click that button, the door just opens, and you’re allowed to continue wandering around for a bit. P. D. in fact showed off that you can go to the side, hack a terminal, and check out Father Elijah’s old room, complete with a chemistry set you can interact with to make a jar of Cloud Residue (the Cloud being the super-toxic fog that surrounds the casino) and other such supplies you can pick up. It wasn’t until she approached the radio at the far end of the hall that she ended up gassed and kidnapped so the DLC proper could start! It was just a little odd to see after watching how the other DLCs started – but then again, “Dead Money” IS the first one they made, so maybe it makes sense that that one in particular would be a little weird.
B) P. D. Shoot waking up in the Sierra Madre after the opening titles (talking about how the casino was supposed to open with and prove a new beginning for all the rich and famous folk who got invitations...only for the War to put paid to THOSE plans) and being greeted by Father Elijah! Or, well, a hologram of him, informing her that she was going to do as he said or he’d set off her bomb collar and take her head clean off. P. D. naturally did not want that, so she elected to be polite and play along with his whims. She was thus tasked with finding three other people with bomb collars and bringing them to the central plaza – Christine, Dean, and “Dog.” P. D. was amenable to this, at least for the moment, but had to ask what had happened to her stuff –
Prompting Elijah to confess that that actually wasn’t his doing – the casino had automated security that whisked away anything that had the slightest bit of radiation on it (and wasn’t a quest item, or part of P. D.’s body) and took it to “the bunker.” And he hadn’t been able to hack the systems to stop this. Fortunately for P. D., he’d provided her with a jumpsuit and a weapon –
Unfortunately for P. D., said jumpsuit was not armor (meaning it wouldn’t reduce any incoming damage if she ran into trouble), and said weapon was a holorifle – aka a gun. The one type of weapon she wasn’t allowed to use. *shakehead* Very helpful, Elijah. But at least showing off that bit of conversation helped explain Jon’s reluctance at smuggling in items via exploits – there were lore reasons she had nothing on her, damn it!
C) P. D. Shoot taking stock of what she had on her person (which wasn’t much, as you might expect – and while she did still have the rebreather that she got as part of the quest to make friends with the Boomers, which WOULD have given her 3 DT and thus a bit of protection, Jon decided it counted as a “smuggled quest item” exploit and refused to have her put it on. *shakehead* Oh Jon...he was willing to use her camera as an impromptu zoom feature/binoculars, at least!) and deciding that, while she was still very capable of stealthing around the place (as naturally none of her skills or perks had changed), she needed to get herself some appropriate weaponry and FAST. Cue her starting a trip around the outer courtyard areas of the Sierra Madre, grabbing herself a “Cosmic Knife” and whatever other goodies she could find as she wandered (including bobby pins, a lead pipe out of an emergency fire hose box, bits of cloud residue to make poison out of later, and some lovely Abraxo Cleaner) –
And then. Right after finding the entrance to “Puesta Del Sol” (which she couldn’t go in yet because she didn’t have her fellow captives), and immediately after Jon remembering “oh yeah, going into a DLC heals you, I’d better knock her health back down to what it should be,” and even more immediately after him remarking that her health probably wasn’t going to stay at 219 HP for very long, P. D. stepped into a side area off the main path, collected some more cloud residue, and started scurrying off to the side in search of more goodies –
Only to suddenly let out a cry of pain. Cue Jon stopping her in her tracks, looking around in brief bafflement – and then spotting behind her a sprung bear trap. Which he hadn’t noticed because it was a brownish-red, and thanks to The Cloud, everything in this DLC, at least outside, is a brownish-red. And then he looked at her health –
Revealing she was down to 174 HP. Which – he said she’d lost like 30-odd points, but I’m pretty sure she actually lost 45 HP there. As you might imagine, Jon took the opportunity to admit that he now seriously regretted taking Bloody Mess (which granted P. D. a flat +5% damage to all her weapons and made some enemies explode into bloody chunks) over Light Step (which would have granted P. D. immunity to all floor-based traps and explosives) and trusting in his ability to remember where all the traps were. *shakehead* We tried to warn you, Jon!
D) P. D. Shoot doing her best to shake that off (while Jon sarcastically called himself a “genius” and generally grumbled about his bad luck) and continuing her looting adventures! Which involved:
I. Picking up every freaking Sierra Madre chip she could find (on floors, in fountains, in containers – if it was a Sierra Madre chip, she was HAVING it) for later use in the vending machines
II. Discovering and looting one of Dean’s Secret Stashes for goodies (Dean being one of the people she was tasked with finding – hopefully he will not be annoyed with her for that), including a spare Cosmic Knife to repair her own with
III. Grabbing a Knife Spear out of a skeleton by another fountain full of Sierra Madre chips – these are the signature weapons of the Ghost People (who are essentially Discount Necromorphs from Dead Space – they’re properly humanoid, no obvious body horror, but they too must be killed by targeting their limbs – otherwise they’ll just get up again, even if you drain all their health) who populate the casino, and P. D. fully intends to use them against their masters as her new “first strike” weapon (aka the one she’ll be using to get the sneak attack critical before swapping to the faster Cosmic Knife to finish them off)
IV. Retracing her steps back to the main plaza after getting her goodies and tracking down her first radroach (which she easily slaughtered), the vending machine code to “return outfit item” in a shop run by one of the few friendly holograms in the DLC (which allows her to give clothes to vending machines in exchange for chips – and lucky here, there were some pre-War outfits in a suitcase tucked in the corner), and a hot plate in an old room that allowed her to turn some of her gathered Abraxo and Cloud residue into weak “Cloud Kiss” poison to rub all over her Knife Spear. Because poison is going to be USEFUL in this DLC, damn it
V. And, as per the above, fighting her first Ghost Person! Not the one that the game expects you to fight first, amusingly enough (which was in the area where she got her first Knife Spear), but the one in the Residential District blocking her access to the first workbench you can find in the game. Basically, the strat was poison the Knife Spear; do some Turbo via Implant GRX; jab the Knife Spear right up the Ghost Person’s behind; swap to the Cosmic Knife and start wailing on said Ghost Person until a limb was crippled, causing them to explode into giblets (hopefully not damaging poor P. D. further). *nods* I mean, the Ghost Person went down no problems, so you can’t argue with results! And she was able to loot the body for both regular and throwing knife spears to maintain her own, so that was good too. :D
E) P. D. Shoot then using the workbench to clean her Cosmic Knife, granting her the Cosmic Knife (Clean) with a shinier blade, full condition, better damage, and a bonus to crit chance as well as a bonus to limb damage (who knew Abraxo was so powerful?), then testing it out on an unfortunate radroach around the corner before making her way BACK to the original Ghost Person she saw to slaughter them. She ended up hitting him so hard with the knife spear that he slid straight through a nearby archway, forcing her to chase him a bit to slash him up with her new shiny knife. XD But slash him up she did, before collecting all the chips out of the nearby fountain, because chips good.
And that’s where I left things off, with P. D. considering her next move as she worked her way through the starting areas of the DLC! Tomorrow, we’ll see how she handles whatever other enemies there may be in her way – and if she walks into any more traps. I’m hoping not, because I would like Jon to be able to properly complete the YOLO run – but honestly, if he dies to bear traps or floor mines here in “Dead Money,” it will feel a bit karmic. We told you to take Light Step, Jon!
2. Post Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – took me a half-hour to get all the notes and suchlike sorted, but it is indeed up! Please feel free to peruse it at your leisure. I hope you all enjoy! :D
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – are you that surprised, given how long my write-ups take? *sigh* Well, I’ve got a long weekend coming up, so hopefully I can catch up then.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse (as per usual), but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I got two key things done:
A) First, I made a post advertising the latest chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy” going up – couldn’t do a proper “link” post as those didn’t seem to be working again, so I settled for a text post with a link in it (“link” posts have a big ass-link at the top you can click, if you were wondering what the difference is) – we’ll see if anyone notices!
B) And second, I got my Song Saturday post sorted, queuing up a reblog of my post featuring an extended version of the Dishonored 2 main theme! Because – as I said in my original post and my tags this time around – that theme always makes me think about what the potential opening title sequence to a hypothetical Valicer In The Dark TV show would look like. And I hadn’t reblogged it yet, so – yeah. Perfect song to cap off a week where I posted another chapter of a VITD story!
Not too shabby! Yes, I'm a little annoyed I didn't have time for a YouTube video, but at the same time I'm glad I got my VLA(NS) queue sorted and my new chapter up and all that, so -- can't be TOO mad. But now it is time for me to go to bed, as I still have to get through Friday (the 13th). Night all!
