Monday The 13th
Apr. 13th, 2026 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWhich I personally feel is worse than a Friday the 13th, because now you're starting off the week unlucky. Fortunately, my day wasn't too bad overall:
Work – It wasn’t as bad a Monday The 13th at work as I feared it might be, though I was very busy all day:
A) I spent pretty much the entire morning doing the GL, since a LOT of stuff got posted on Friday (and I had to e-mail our processors to get them to deposit a check they missed), with just one break to take a phone call that I subsequently had to redirect downstairs because the person was asking about scheduling Masses, and that is very much not my department
B) Then, after lunch, I researched why a particular person had an overpayment on their Capital Campaign pledge (turns out I accidentally scheduled them for an extra payment, whoops) and sent them an e-mail letting them know and offering a refund
C) Then I did a bit of roster maintenance, looking up some information on two people with the same first and last name to get their middle initials so we could differentiate them more (they’re father and son, so you want to make sure that the son doesn’t get the father’s gift or vice-versa – which, uh, actually already happened as the son didn’t have a record on our system previously ^^; My coworker fixed that, fortunately)
D) I also took a call from a lady who set up her pledge for the wrong amount, and then set up a SEPARATE pledge for the right amount trying to correct it – shut down the pledge for the wrong amount, made a note to adjust her payments accordingly once the right-amount pledge comes over
E) And I ended the day with getting the first Easter Collection report and noting down all the ID numbers for the parishes so I can post that tomorrow
Whew! And the rest of the week promises to be just as busy, as I have reversals to do and images to capture and all that good stuff. Hopefully it isn’t too stressful (aka, hopefully the phone doesn’t start ringing off the hook). We shall see!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – I have decided that this week’s workouts are going to be dedicated to “stuff that I want to watch but have trouble finding the time for,” and accordingly spent tonight pedaling my way through –
A) “This Thomas the Tank Engine Game is NOT For Kids” by OXBox! Featuring Mike and Andy playing Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor, which is not an indie horror game featuring Thomas like I first assumed, but rather an officially-licensed Thomas the Tank Engine game –
Made by the people who made Train Sim World and other realistic rail simulators. Meaning that the reason it wasn’t for kids was because it was in fact rather tedious and boring. And because Mike and Andy kept finding innuendo in it, but I think we can all agree that was just them. XD They played three missions over the course of the half-hour video –
I. The tutorial, where one learns how to drive Thomas – featuring Andy being stunned to learn the “Fat Controller” has been renamed “Sir Topham Hatt” (Mike pointed out the original name was rather size-ist, but Andy was like “but he asked people to call him that!”); Andy wondering if Thomas “feels the levers when we pull them?” and Mike going “I don’t think we want to know the answer to that;” Mike getting very annoyed by the game forcing him to get out of Thomas and go switch the switch track manually himself (especially when it then told him that he could just do that automatically from the map screen); Mike revealing his driver to be the most middle-aged and balding man he could find in the character selector (to make sure any children playing were aware of the specter of mortality over them); Mike not slowing down in time when it came to coupling with Thomas’s carriages and smacking straight into them (they did not look particularly happy about it, but then they didn’t look particularly happy about anything); Mike following the tutorial to activate Free Cam mode and ending up in a bush (“pervert cam,” Mike called it); and Mike way overshooting a stop at one of the stations, getting annoyed when the passengers wouldn’t get off anyway, and backing up without closing the train car doors (Andy warned him Topham Hatt wouldn’t be pleased, and Mike replied, “Well, he can shove it up his…” XD)
II. The “Thomas and Gordon” scenario, which was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas whistles Gordon awake from a nap, and to get him back Gordon drags him along on an express train ride – featuring Mike pointing out just what awful people the trains were and how they spent all their time being selfish and proud and bitching each other out (which – you know what, fair); the boys accusing Thomas of having gotten stoned the night before when he had trouble waking up one morning due to his fire having gone out (“Thomas was ‘tired’ because he was up all night ‘steaming,’” as Andy put it); Mike and Andy complaining about how boring just going back and forth all the time was in this game (noting that cars were better because of their lateral movement capabilities); Mike slamming the coaches that Thomas was bringing to Gordon right into his rear, and then being like “oh, he LIKED that” when the camera showed Gordon’s scheming face right afterward (it WAS a very unfortunate face); the pair noticing that Gordon didn’t actually have a driver during the bit where he drags Thomas along with his coaches on an express train journey and immediately declaring that Gordon had gone rogue (with Andy being shocked that “Gordon goes mad and tries to kill Thomas” is the first story mission in the game); Mike managing to get control of his driver in Thomas again and attempting to have him leap from the cab – only for him to somehow end up stuck in the luggage rack of one of the express coaches XD (he eventually wiggled the guy free, but was unable to get him off the coach, so he just had him sit down and accept his fate); and Mike briefly failing the scenario by being unable to slow Gordon down in time when they got near his station, which resulted in him derailing – AND GLITCH-FLYING BETHESDA-STYLE INTO THE SKY (Mike and Andy both found this VERY funny, as you might expect)
III. And the “Thomas Goes Fishing” scenario, which I assume was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas’s driver filled him up with river water when the usual water pipe was out of commission, resulting in Thomas getting a boiler full of fish – featuring Mike accusing the scenario at the start of “combining the two most boring activities in the world, trainspotting and fishing” (mean XD); the boys having a good giggle over the shitty animation of the driver getting river water to refill Thomas’s tank (which featured the bucket moving on its own as he stood staring straight ahead, stock-still, on the bridge); Mike getting annoyed at how many times he had to go back and forth refilling the bucket, then refilling Thomas (granted, it was quite tedious to watch, so I can only imagine how tedious it was to play); neither Mike nor Andy approving of Thomas going “That’s good, that’s good!” and puffing happily in response to his water tank being refilled (innuendo everywhere); Mike and Andy calling Producer Jon out for getting bored and watching a different video (not even an OXBox video!) while they recorded this one while taking Thomas to the station to pick up passengers; Mike and Andy wondering if Thomas really would blow up when he started complaining about a pain in his boiler after getting his passengers and if they could force the issue by making him go max speed (Mike in particular seemed VERY KEEN on blowing him up); the boys getting more interested in a “mad cows vs pigs football game” over to the side of the tracks rather than whatever was going on with Thomas (to be fair, I too was wondering what was going on with the animals on the soccer field); the boys noting that any fish found in Thomas’s boiler should be dead given they were in, you know, a BOILER (and then wondering if they’d be good to eat); and Andy angrily pointing out that the game forced them to put river water into Thomas when Topham Hatt asked if he’d learned something from this experience (though he and Mike did have a good giggle over the Inspector and the Driver literally fishing the fish out of Thomas’s boiler). Oh, and the boys then ending the video by going into free play mode and derailing Gordon again. XD
Fun stuff! I love these weird one-off videos they do, they’re always a good time.
B) “BG3 Warlock: The Easiest Yet Most Powerful Spellcaster” by DeltiasGaming! A YouTube Short talking about how, if you want to play a powerful spellcaster but don’t want too much difficulty in playing them, being a Fiend Warlock with Pact Of The Blade is the way to go (appropriately, featuring many clips of Wyll in action under the chatter). Mostly because Warlocks get access to Eldritch Blast (the world’s best cantrip) and also have proficiency with Light Armor (meaning they have more protection options than, say, a Wizard, who has no armor proficiency at all); Fiend Warlocks in particular get a passive that grants them temporary hit points for killing enemies (keeping them in fights longer); and Warlocks with the Pact Of The Blade can summon a magical weapon (giving them a handy-dandy powerful melee option if it came down to it). Deltias acknowledged that Warlocks did have the disadvantage of having VERY few spell slots and not a lot of spell variety (they’re kind of a mid-tier Jack-Of-All-Trades when it comes to spells), but pointed out immediately afterward that, if you wanted to fix that, all you had to do was multiclass with Sorcerer, which also got you metamagic to apply new effects to your spells. (Or, if you’re like me, you can go Bard/Warlock and pick up a modded feat to let you learn a bit of metamagic even WITHOUT being a sorcerer…though I won’t be picking that up for a while, as it feels like something Smiler should get as a high-level feat.)
C) And “Project Hail Mary – Rockyisms” by SonyPicturesSG! Another YouTube Short consisting of a collection of clips of Rocky from Project Hail Mary, including:
I. What looked like Grace and Rocky’s first meeting, with Grace teaching Rocky to wave and both of them giggling together pre-translation
II. Rocky revealing he watched Grace sleep, and Grace going “that’s a little weird”
III. Rocky asking where his bedroom was while exploring Grace’s ship in his ball
IV. Rocky’s eating habits, like in the “Personal Space” clip XD
V. Rocky telling Grace to “use planet gravity to move with line,” Grace responding, “I didn’t think of that!” and Rocky going “I did” XD
VI. And Grace pretending to surf with Rocky in the projector room, with Rocky gamely hanging ten despite not being able to perceive any of the projections
Just more fun stuff featuring our favorite rock alien! I’m always down for that. :)
2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I didn’t get QUITE as far as I might have liked today thanks to a lot of fiddly little edits slowing me down, but I did at least get through:
A) Alice searching the upstairs back corridors, discovering Stanley’s little chill-out hidey-hole, and stealing his office keys out of there
B) Alice discovering the door into the museum proper past the dinosaur, and taking a moment to study Victor’s maps of the area while waiting for a guard to pass by...which alerted her to the fact that her best way down to the ground floor was to take a set of stairs with a motion-activated roaring T Rex head on it
C) Alice tailing the guard while admiring the exhibits around the “Extinction Wing,” then – after the guard inconveniently didn’t go down the stairs and trigger the head for her – running down the stairs and hiding beneath them after triggering the head; luckily the guard that came to investigate blamed the roaring on a fly and didn’t notice her at all
D) Alice studying her maps again, then heading across the room into the bathroom, then into the supply closet in said bathroom (after making sure to sound like she was going into a stall to fool the guy already having a wee in there), and then into the vent in said supply closet in said bathroom
E) Alice crawling through the vents, getting a faster-than-usual clue of where to go from Auspex (and realizing she should have checked earlier if she went invisible faster or not while using Obfuscate – don’t worry, Alice, another opportunity to check that is coming up), and ending up in a server room/break room in search of a key the Insane Children insisted she’d find useful
F) Alice discovering that her desired key was actually in the security camera monitoring room the next room over, right next to a guard eating donuts – with no other options, she zapped him with a bit of Dementation, which caused him to start giggling as he remembered a joke he wanted to tell a coworker and head into the next room to relay it, allowing Alice to get the key and escape back into the vents
Not too shabby – only got me to page 36 out of 67, but I suppose that’s still past the halfway point. Still, hoping I can get a bit farther tomorrow! Fingers crossed for less fiddly edits, people...
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but a lack of checks here is why I’m watching the stuff I would normally put in this section with my workouts. Work smarter not harder!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t do anything with my drafts or queue over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, I did just straight-up reblog something – a short thread featuring a post by centaurself celebrating a tumblr icon – a hairless rat named Neil who, according to an iconic photograph of him with a little toy keyboard, banged out the tunes on April 13th, 2006 – by sharing all four known photos of Neil and the website they came from, followed by a post from starberry-cupcake wishing everyone a “Happy 20th Neil Banging Out The Tunes.” :p It was just something fun to put on the old blog!
So yeah -- not too shabby, I suppose! Though it would have been nicer if I hadn't come home to hear that Dad had been feeling sick all day. :( Hopefully he feels better tomorrow! And now I need to get to bed so I can try to get a decent amount of sleep. Fingers crossed for an okay Tuesday -- night all!
Work – It wasn’t as bad a Monday The 13th at work as I feared it might be, though I was very busy all day:
A) I spent pretty much the entire morning doing the GL, since a LOT of stuff got posted on Friday (and I had to e-mail our processors to get them to deposit a check they missed), with just one break to take a phone call that I subsequently had to redirect downstairs because the person was asking about scheduling Masses, and that is very much not my department
B) Then, after lunch, I researched why a particular person had an overpayment on their Capital Campaign pledge (turns out I accidentally scheduled them for an extra payment, whoops) and sent them an e-mail letting them know and offering a refund
C) Then I did a bit of roster maintenance, looking up some information on two people with the same first and last name to get their middle initials so we could differentiate them more (they’re father and son, so you want to make sure that the son doesn’t get the father’s gift or vice-versa – which, uh, actually already happened as the son didn’t have a record on our system previously ^^; My coworker fixed that, fortunately)
D) I also took a call from a lady who set up her pledge for the wrong amount, and then set up a SEPARATE pledge for the right amount trying to correct it – shut down the pledge for the wrong amount, made a note to adjust her payments accordingly once the right-amount pledge comes over
E) And I ended the day with getting the first Easter Collection report and noting down all the ID numbers for the parishes so I can post that tomorrow
Whew! And the rest of the week promises to be just as busy, as I have reversals to do and images to capture and all that good stuff. Hopefully it isn’t too stressful (aka, hopefully the phone doesn’t start ringing off the hook). We shall see!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – I have decided that this week’s workouts are going to be dedicated to “stuff that I want to watch but have trouble finding the time for,” and accordingly spent tonight pedaling my way through –
A) “This Thomas the Tank Engine Game is NOT For Kids” by OXBox! Featuring Mike and Andy playing Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor, which is not an indie horror game featuring Thomas like I first assumed, but rather an officially-licensed Thomas the Tank Engine game –
Made by the people who made Train Sim World and other realistic rail simulators. Meaning that the reason it wasn’t for kids was because it was in fact rather tedious and boring. And because Mike and Andy kept finding innuendo in it, but I think we can all agree that was just them. XD They played three missions over the course of the half-hour video –
I. The tutorial, where one learns how to drive Thomas – featuring Andy being stunned to learn the “Fat Controller” has been renamed “Sir Topham Hatt” (Mike pointed out the original name was rather size-ist, but Andy was like “but he asked people to call him that!”); Andy wondering if Thomas “feels the levers when we pull them?” and Mike going “I don’t think we want to know the answer to that;” Mike getting very annoyed by the game forcing him to get out of Thomas and go switch the switch track manually himself (especially when it then told him that he could just do that automatically from the map screen); Mike revealing his driver to be the most middle-aged and balding man he could find in the character selector (to make sure any children playing were aware of the specter of mortality over them); Mike not slowing down in time when it came to coupling with Thomas’s carriages and smacking straight into them (they did not look particularly happy about it, but then they didn’t look particularly happy about anything); Mike following the tutorial to activate Free Cam mode and ending up in a bush (“pervert cam,” Mike called it); and Mike way overshooting a stop at one of the stations, getting annoyed when the passengers wouldn’t get off anyway, and backing up without closing the train car doors (Andy warned him Topham Hatt wouldn’t be pleased, and Mike replied, “Well, he can shove it up his…” XD)
II. The “Thomas and Gordon” scenario, which was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas whistles Gordon awake from a nap, and to get him back Gordon drags him along on an express train ride – featuring Mike pointing out just what awful people the trains were and how they spent all their time being selfish and proud and bitching each other out (which – you know what, fair); the boys accusing Thomas of having gotten stoned the night before when he had trouble waking up one morning due to his fire having gone out (“Thomas was ‘tired’ because he was up all night ‘steaming,’” as Andy put it); Mike and Andy complaining about how boring just going back and forth all the time was in this game (noting that cars were better because of their lateral movement capabilities); Mike slamming the coaches that Thomas was bringing to Gordon right into his rear, and then being like “oh, he LIKED that” when the camera showed Gordon’s scheming face right afterward (it WAS a very unfortunate face); the pair noticing that Gordon didn’t actually have a driver during the bit where he drags Thomas along with his coaches on an express train journey and immediately declaring that Gordon had gone rogue (with Andy being shocked that “Gordon goes mad and tries to kill Thomas” is the first story mission in the game); Mike managing to get control of his driver in Thomas again and attempting to have him leap from the cab – only for him to somehow end up stuck in the luggage rack of one of the express coaches XD (he eventually wiggled the guy free, but was unable to get him off the coach, so he just had him sit down and accept his fate); and Mike briefly failing the scenario by being unable to slow Gordon down in time when they got near his station, which resulted in him derailing – AND GLITCH-FLYING BETHESDA-STYLE INTO THE SKY (Mike and Andy both found this VERY funny, as you might expect)
III. And the “Thomas Goes Fishing” scenario, which I assume was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas’s driver filled him up with river water when the usual water pipe was out of commission, resulting in Thomas getting a boiler full of fish – featuring Mike accusing the scenario at the start of “combining the two most boring activities in the world, trainspotting and fishing” (mean XD); the boys having a good giggle over the shitty animation of the driver getting river water to refill Thomas’s tank (which featured the bucket moving on its own as he stood staring straight ahead, stock-still, on the bridge); Mike getting annoyed at how many times he had to go back and forth refilling the bucket, then refilling Thomas (granted, it was quite tedious to watch, so I can only imagine how tedious it was to play); neither Mike nor Andy approving of Thomas going “That’s good, that’s good!” and puffing happily in response to his water tank being refilled (innuendo everywhere); Mike and Andy calling Producer Jon out for getting bored and watching a different video (not even an OXBox video!) while they recorded this one while taking Thomas to the station to pick up passengers; Mike and Andy wondering if Thomas really would blow up when he started complaining about a pain in his boiler after getting his passengers and if they could force the issue by making him go max speed (Mike in particular seemed VERY KEEN on blowing him up); the boys getting more interested in a “mad cows vs pigs football game” over to the side of the tracks rather than whatever was going on with Thomas (to be fair, I too was wondering what was going on with the animals on the soccer field); the boys noting that any fish found in Thomas’s boiler should be dead given they were in, you know, a BOILER (and then wondering if they’d be good to eat); and Andy angrily pointing out that the game forced them to put river water into Thomas when Topham Hatt asked if he’d learned something from this experience (though he and Mike did have a good giggle over the Inspector and the Driver literally fishing the fish out of Thomas’s boiler). Oh, and the boys then ending the video by going into free play mode and derailing Gordon again. XD
Fun stuff! I love these weird one-off videos they do, they’re always a good time.
B) “BG3 Warlock: The Easiest Yet Most Powerful Spellcaster” by DeltiasGaming! A YouTube Short talking about how, if you want to play a powerful spellcaster but don’t want too much difficulty in playing them, being a Fiend Warlock with Pact Of The Blade is the way to go (appropriately, featuring many clips of Wyll in action under the chatter). Mostly because Warlocks get access to Eldritch Blast (the world’s best cantrip) and also have proficiency with Light Armor (meaning they have more protection options than, say, a Wizard, who has no armor proficiency at all); Fiend Warlocks in particular get a passive that grants them temporary hit points for killing enemies (keeping them in fights longer); and Warlocks with the Pact Of The Blade can summon a magical weapon (giving them a handy-dandy powerful melee option if it came down to it). Deltias acknowledged that Warlocks did have the disadvantage of having VERY few spell slots and not a lot of spell variety (they’re kind of a mid-tier Jack-Of-All-Trades when it comes to spells), but pointed out immediately afterward that, if you wanted to fix that, all you had to do was multiclass with Sorcerer, which also got you metamagic to apply new effects to your spells. (Or, if you’re like me, you can go Bard/Warlock and pick up a modded feat to let you learn a bit of metamagic even WITHOUT being a sorcerer…though I won’t be picking that up for a while, as it feels like something Smiler should get as a high-level feat.)
C) And “Project Hail Mary – Rockyisms” by SonyPicturesSG! Another YouTube Short consisting of a collection of clips of Rocky from Project Hail Mary, including:
I. What looked like Grace and Rocky’s first meeting, with Grace teaching Rocky to wave and both of them giggling together pre-translation
II. Rocky revealing he watched Grace sleep, and Grace going “that’s a little weird”
III. Rocky asking where his bedroom was while exploring Grace’s ship in his ball
IV. Rocky’s eating habits, like in the “Personal Space” clip XD
V. Rocky telling Grace to “use planet gravity to move with line,” Grace responding, “I didn’t think of that!” and Rocky going “I did” XD
VI. And Grace pretending to surf with Rocky in the projector room, with Rocky gamely hanging ten despite not being able to perceive any of the projections
Just more fun stuff featuring our favorite rock alien! I’m always down for that. :)
2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I didn’t get QUITE as far as I might have liked today thanks to a lot of fiddly little edits slowing me down, but I did at least get through:
A) Alice searching the upstairs back corridors, discovering Stanley’s little chill-out hidey-hole, and stealing his office keys out of there
B) Alice discovering the door into the museum proper past the dinosaur, and taking a moment to study Victor’s maps of the area while waiting for a guard to pass by...which alerted her to the fact that her best way down to the ground floor was to take a set of stairs with a motion-activated roaring T Rex head on it
C) Alice tailing the guard while admiring the exhibits around the “Extinction Wing,” then – after the guard inconveniently didn’t go down the stairs and trigger the head for her – running down the stairs and hiding beneath them after triggering the head; luckily the guard that came to investigate blamed the roaring on a fly and didn’t notice her at all
D) Alice studying her maps again, then heading across the room into the bathroom, then into the supply closet in said bathroom (after making sure to sound like she was going into a stall to fool the guy already having a wee in there), and then into the vent in said supply closet in said bathroom
E) Alice crawling through the vents, getting a faster-than-usual clue of where to go from Auspex (and realizing she should have checked earlier if she went invisible faster or not while using Obfuscate – don’t worry, Alice, another opportunity to check that is coming up), and ending up in a server room/break room in search of a key the Insane Children insisted she’d find useful
F) Alice discovering that her desired key was actually in the security camera monitoring room the next room over, right next to a guard eating donuts – with no other options, she zapped him with a bit of Dementation, which caused him to start giggling as he remembered a joke he wanted to tell a coworker and head into the next room to relay it, allowing Alice to get the key and escape back into the vents
Not too shabby – only got me to page 36 out of 67, but I suppose that’s still past the halfway point. Still, hoping I can get a bit farther tomorrow! Fingers crossed for less fiddly edits, people...
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but a lack of checks here is why I’m watching the stuff I would normally put in this section with my workouts. Work smarter not harder!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t do anything with my drafts or queue over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, I did just straight-up reblog something – a short thread featuring a post by centaurself celebrating a tumblr icon – a hairless rat named Neil who, according to an iconic photograph of him with a little toy keyboard, banged out the tunes on April 13th, 2006 – by sharing all four known photos of Neil and the website they came from, followed by a post from starberry-cupcake wishing everyone a “Happy 20th Neil Banging Out The Tunes.” :p It was just something fun to put on the old blog!
So yeah -- not too shabby, I suppose! Though it would have been nicer if I hadn't come home to hear that Dad had been feeling sick all day. :( Hopefully he feels better tomorrow! And now I need to get to bed so I can try to get a decent amount of sleep. Fingers crossed for an okay Tuesday -- night all!
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Date: 2026-04-15 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-15 03:51 am (UTC)