Yeah, the humidity let up some today, after yesterday was downright soupy -- I guess the thunderstorm that chased me off the computer last night cleared some of it out! Not enough, though -- it was still sticky enough that it was more pleasant to hide in the AC. *sigh* We're supposed to get some better weather this weekend -- I'm hoping! Would be nice to be able to open my window again if I want.
Anyway -- enough bitching about the weather. Here's the daily write-up:
Work – Well, the morning was a little bit hectic – with me looking up various bits of weirdness that we’d spotted (like someone with a duplicate pledge that needed to be taken off, or someone else with two pledges, and the payments on one were going on the other for some reason), splitting someone’s capital campaign pledge because they were now at a new parish, putting on a late Easter gift, and telling a donor I couldn’t do a credit card payment because we were preparing for the end-of-fiscal-year wrap-up (she said she’d send in a check instead) – but the afternoon was much quieter, with me just marking some people deceased, going through a QC file for the latest pledge billing, and sending a check back to a donor because it was an overpayment on their pledge. *shrug* So I guess it all evened out into a pretty average day by the end. :p We’ll see what Thursday is like!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Today’s chunklet saw James finish off Scarlett’s section and complete Krystoff’s final tasks – both of which were more difficult than he’d anticipated:
A) First off, when trying to complete Scarlett’s wedding day, not only did James find that Patchy had left the lot, he also found that he could NOT get the actual wedding event to complete – ending it early did nothing, letting it run out on its own did nothing – it was just stuck there, preventing him from accessing the map screen and thus being able to switch Sims! Fortunately, using MC Command Center to send Scarlett to CAS and back finally made the game realize “oh, yeah, wedding’s over,” and gameplay could continue as normal. James hit “Save As” after that, as you might imagine!
B) Then, once it was no longer wedding time, James used cheats to teleport Patchy to Scarlett and add him to the family so, you know, the married couple could actually be together – then attempted to make them have a baby because apparently everybody without a pet needs a child. (Except Pablo, who has both!) Patchy proved unable to “try for baby” in the traditional sense, and Scarlett couldn’t pick him as an option to have a science baby with – fortunately, Patchy could pick HER when he tried it from his phone, and the two ran off for a bit before coming back with a baby boy James named Scott! (Because it was as close as he could get to smushing together “scarecrow” and “Scarlett.” XD) Scott got shoved into a corner of the bedroom, much like Sighlas, though James did make sure that both his parents gave him one good cuddle before their section of the episode ended. Bit sad that Scott will never get to grow up, but then again, given he was made with the genetic material of a scarecrow (who was a decently-attractive Sim under the hood, admittedly – James checked in CAS) who was never supposed to be a permanent family member...yeah, I think aging him up might break this already-glitchy save once and for all. :p Best not to risk it!
C) With all that done, James then proceeded to finish off Scarlett’s section with a couple of upgrades to her house – putting out the green axolotl she found somewhere in Cuidad Enamorada, along with her marriage certificate to Patchy and Scott’s first handprints; scattering fireflies around the lot to make the tree house even more magical; and adding a wishing well! Scarlett’s last act in the save was to wish at said well for money –
And promptly lose $250 before being stung by bees. XD The well must have looked at her and said “you’re the FUCKING MILLIONAIRE, Scarlett – no.”
D) Satisfied with Scarlet, James moved onto Krystoff, who had the important task of finishing off the gallery in the basement of the community center by painting everyone’s partners and pets! James chose to start with the pets (mostly because Krystoff and Raoul have their own dog who needed a portrait) –
Aaand immediately regretted this decision, as he quickly realized that most of the pets would need to be up on a platform of some description if he wanted to get a good picture of them. Cue him spending a LOT of time fucking around with poor Krystoff’s painting studio, creating both raised platforms for the pets to sit on and sunken bits for Krystoff to paint in so everything was at the right angle; using MC Command Center to add the various pets to Krystoff’s family temporarily to make it easier to paint them; and breaking out the “selectable pets” cheat via mods to make the pets sit or stand where he wanted them to (uh, sort of – getting them in the EXACT right position often proved tricky!). It was quite the process, as you might imagine! But happily worth it in the end, as Krystoff did paint some nice (if slightly goofy) pictures of all the pets in Tiny Town – even Pablo’s horse Pecan got a nice portrait! :) Great to see the animals of the town getting some love~
E) With the pet portraits sorted (and all pets returned to their original owners), it was time to paint the remaining spouses and one-non-newborn child (because James had already decided he wasn’t bothering with the babies) in the town! Getting Judith Ward and Kyra to stand for their portraits didn’t prove too difficult – however, James had to use cheats to teleport Patchy to Krystoff for the painting session...and ended up getting THE WRONG PATCHY. Yes, there was a wrong Patchy for him to get! How, I’m not sure – though I do think Scarlett does have a “normal” Patchy SOMEWHERE on her lot, so maybe the game just assumed James meant THAT NPC when he was going through the list of NPCs to teleport. James was like “...screw it, he looks the same as Scarlett’s Patchy,” temporarily added him to the family, and had Krystoff paint him anyway. XD Once that was done (and Patchy had been added to a new household and sent away), James then wrangled Silas M. and got Krystoff to paint him, then temporarily saved and closed the game to get the mod that removes the “painterly” filter from “Paint From Reference” paintings –
Aaand when he loaded up the game again, Silas M.’s portrait had turned blank. For no reason at all. Fortunately, none of the other portraits were affected, so Krystoff only had to do that one over again, but given how annoying it had been to get Silas M. to cooperate the FIRST time, James was very annoyed.
F) And once all the portraits were painted, James wrapped things up officially with Krystoff by painting an unpainted section of his chimney, and fixing a window that was too high up on the front of his house. Just little things, but James was a touch embarrassed by how long everything might have been like that! :P
So yes – very glitchy and difficult, but James got everything to cooperate in the end, more or less! I ended with him preparing to put all the portraits up in the “Hall of Spares” room around the entrance to the vault (and wondering how he was going to fit them all) – tomorrow, we finish things off with the final bit of community center reno, and the big farewell party James wants to throw! :)
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another good page done on this, featuring:
A) Alice channeling the cowgirl spirit of the regular Fem!Malkavian Fledgling and her terrible stripper outfit, turning the strap of her bag into a lasso that she then used to snag the lever in the deadly beam of light and yank it up without injury to herself – took her four tries, admittedly, but she did it! Wonderland was dutifully impressed
B) Alice then retracing her steps to try and figure out what the lever did, and finding a door to a courtyard area with a “guest house” of sorts – complete with double doors that had clearly been barred before
C) And Alice entering the house (if not as dramatically as Carpenter wanted) and taking a look around – only to realize that, uh, there are a LOT of mannequins in here. XD Yeah, uh, welcome to the creepiest part of the whole fucking game, Alice – the Mannequin House! Aren’t you glad that I play with the Unofficial Patch + and thus can make you experience things like this? :P At least the true horrors don’t start until tomorrow...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to concentrate on getting some of the stuff out of my Watch Later tonight and thus watched last week’s OXtra list: “7 Villains That Let You Live and Regretted It!” Ellen, Mike, AND Andy going through those villains who either –
I. Decided to let the hero live for no good reason (Pagan Min, who squanders two opportunities to off Far Cry 4 protagonist Ajay before the kid dismantles his dictatorship because he has such fond memories of Ajay’s mom, damn it)
II. Did try to kill the hero but didn’t think to confirm they were dead (Cesare Borgia, Templar and megalomaniac, who gets his Renaissance snipers to shoot Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood protagonist Ezio Auditore off a rooftop while executing Ezio’s uncle – but then just assumes Ezio didn’t survive the fall, which allows the assassin to recover, stop all his evil plans, and eventually shove HIM off a roof, much more fatally)
III. Or actively helped the hero stay alive while doing things to piss said hero off, apparently never guessing the hero would come after them (Lionel Starkweather, who actively guides Manhunt protagonist James Earl Cash through his snuff film set death maze to kill all the other people in it...and also kidnaps Cash’s family and kills them, apparently not realizing this would lead to Cash deciding it would be nice to end the game by murdering him with a chainsaw)
Yeesh. Bottom line – if you have the hero at your mercy, just kill them already! It will dramatically increase your lifespan, and your minions will probably thank you.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I decided to use this week’s queue to get some random stuff sitting in my drafts out and about, plus give an old Song Saturday another chance at love:
A) For Thursday, I queued up a photoset of pretty purple iridescent butterflies from “ur-daily-inspiration” (because who doesn’t love shimmery purple butterflies? :D)
B) For Friday, I queued up a set of Severance fanart featuring some of Helly R.’s best moments – like waking up on the conference room table after being freshly severed, and writing “LET ME OUT” across her forearms (because I still very much want to properly watch that show, but until I figure out a way to do so, I shall reblog fanart :P)
C) And for Saturday, I reblogged my old Song Saturday post featuring The Cure’s “Lovesong,” talking about how, yes, I think I’ve figured out how to put a Valicer spin on it (because I was going through the depths of the “#song saturday” tag and realized this particular post never got a note, so I figured I might as well bring it back)
So that’s that sorted for the rest of the week, yay~
Not bad, not bad. And now, even though it is NOT thunderstorming (yet, anyway), I am going to make a concerted effort to get off the computer and go to bed. Night all!
Anyway -- enough bitching about the weather. Here's the daily write-up:
Work – Well, the morning was a little bit hectic – with me looking up various bits of weirdness that we’d spotted (like someone with a duplicate pledge that needed to be taken off, or someone else with two pledges, and the payments on one were going on the other for some reason), splitting someone’s capital campaign pledge because they were now at a new parish, putting on a late Easter gift, and telling a donor I couldn’t do a credit card payment because we were preparing for the end-of-fiscal-year wrap-up (she said she’d send in a check instead) – but the afternoon was much quieter, with me just marking some people deceased, going through a QC file for the latest pledge billing, and sending a check back to a donor because it was an overpayment on their pledge. *shrug* So I guess it all evened out into a pretty average day by the end. :p We’ll see what Thursday is like!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Today’s chunklet saw James finish off Scarlett’s section and complete Krystoff’s final tasks – both of which were more difficult than he’d anticipated:
A) First off, when trying to complete Scarlett’s wedding day, not only did James find that Patchy had left the lot, he also found that he could NOT get the actual wedding event to complete – ending it early did nothing, letting it run out on its own did nothing – it was just stuck there, preventing him from accessing the map screen and thus being able to switch Sims! Fortunately, using MC Command Center to send Scarlett to CAS and back finally made the game realize “oh, yeah, wedding’s over,” and gameplay could continue as normal. James hit “Save As” after that, as you might imagine!
B) Then, once it was no longer wedding time, James used cheats to teleport Patchy to Scarlett and add him to the family so, you know, the married couple could actually be together – then attempted to make them have a baby because apparently everybody without a pet needs a child. (Except Pablo, who has both!) Patchy proved unable to “try for baby” in the traditional sense, and Scarlett couldn’t pick him as an option to have a science baby with – fortunately, Patchy could pick HER when he tried it from his phone, and the two ran off for a bit before coming back with a baby boy James named Scott! (Because it was as close as he could get to smushing together “scarecrow” and “Scarlett.” XD) Scott got shoved into a corner of the bedroom, much like Sighlas, though James did make sure that both his parents gave him one good cuddle before their section of the episode ended. Bit sad that Scott will never get to grow up, but then again, given he was made with the genetic material of a scarecrow (who was a decently-attractive Sim under the hood, admittedly – James checked in CAS) who was never supposed to be a permanent family member...yeah, I think aging him up might break this already-glitchy save once and for all. :p Best not to risk it!
C) With all that done, James then proceeded to finish off Scarlett’s section with a couple of upgrades to her house – putting out the green axolotl she found somewhere in Cuidad Enamorada, along with her marriage certificate to Patchy and Scott’s first handprints; scattering fireflies around the lot to make the tree house even more magical; and adding a wishing well! Scarlett’s last act in the save was to wish at said well for money –
And promptly lose $250 before being stung by bees. XD The well must have looked at her and said “you’re the FUCKING MILLIONAIRE, Scarlett – no.”
D) Satisfied with Scarlet, James moved onto Krystoff, who had the important task of finishing off the gallery in the basement of the community center by painting everyone’s partners and pets! James chose to start with the pets (mostly because Krystoff and Raoul have their own dog who needed a portrait) –
Aaand immediately regretted this decision, as he quickly realized that most of the pets would need to be up on a platform of some description if he wanted to get a good picture of them. Cue him spending a LOT of time fucking around with poor Krystoff’s painting studio, creating both raised platforms for the pets to sit on and sunken bits for Krystoff to paint in so everything was at the right angle; using MC Command Center to add the various pets to Krystoff’s family temporarily to make it easier to paint them; and breaking out the “selectable pets” cheat via mods to make the pets sit or stand where he wanted them to (uh, sort of – getting them in the EXACT right position often proved tricky!). It was quite the process, as you might imagine! But happily worth it in the end, as Krystoff did paint some nice (if slightly goofy) pictures of all the pets in Tiny Town – even Pablo’s horse Pecan got a nice portrait! :) Great to see the animals of the town getting some love~
E) With the pet portraits sorted (and all pets returned to their original owners), it was time to paint the remaining spouses and one-non-newborn child (because James had already decided he wasn’t bothering with the babies) in the town! Getting Judith Ward and Kyra to stand for their portraits didn’t prove too difficult – however, James had to use cheats to teleport Patchy to Krystoff for the painting session...and ended up getting THE WRONG PATCHY. Yes, there was a wrong Patchy for him to get! How, I’m not sure – though I do think Scarlett does have a “normal” Patchy SOMEWHERE on her lot, so maybe the game just assumed James meant THAT NPC when he was going through the list of NPCs to teleport. James was like “...screw it, he looks the same as Scarlett’s Patchy,” temporarily added him to the family, and had Krystoff paint him anyway. XD Once that was done (and Patchy had been added to a new household and sent away), James then wrangled Silas M. and got Krystoff to paint him, then temporarily saved and closed the game to get the mod that removes the “painterly” filter from “Paint From Reference” paintings –
Aaand when he loaded up the game again, Silas M.’s portrait had turned blank. For no reason at all. Fortunately, none of the other portraits were affected, so Krystoff only had to do that one over again, but given how annoying it had been to get Silas M. to cooperate the FIRST time, James was very annoyed.
F) And once all the portraits were painted, James wrapped things up officially with Krystoff by painting an unpainted section of his chimney, and fixing a window that was too high up on the front of his house. Just little things, but James was a touch embarrassed by how long everything might have been like that! :P
So yes – very glitchy and difficult, but James got everything to cooperate in the end, more or less! I ended with him preparing to put all the portraits up in the “Hall of Spares” room around the entrance to the vault (and wondering how he was going to fit them all) – tomorrow, we finish things off with the final bit of community center reno, and the big farewell party James wants to throw! :)
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another good page done on this, featuring:
A) Alice channeling the cowgirl spirit of the regular Fem!Malkavian Fledgling and her terrible stripper outfit, turning the strap of her bag into a lasso that she then used to snag the lever in the deadly beam of light and yank it up without injury to herself – took her four tries, admittedly, but she did it! Wonderland was dutifully impressed
B) Alice then retracing her steps to try and figure out what the lever did, and finding a door to a courtyard area with a “guest house” of sorts – complete with double doors that had clearly been barred before
C) And Alice entering the house (if not as dramatically as Carpenter wanted) and taking a look around – only to realize that, uh, there are a LOT of mannequins in here. XD Yeah, uh, welcome to the creepiest part of the whole fucking game, Alice – the Mannequin House! Aren’t you glad that I play with the Unofficial Patch + and thus can make you experience things like this? :P At least the true horrors don’t start until tomorrow...
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to concentrate on getting some of the stuff out of my Watch Later tonight and thus watched last week’s OXtra list: “7 Villains That Let You Live and Regretted It!” Ellen, Mike, AND Andy going through those villains who either –
I. Decided to let the hero live for no good reason (Pagan Min, who squanders two opportunities to off Far Cry 4 protagonist Ajay before the kid dismantles his dictatorship because he has such fond memories of Ajay’s mom, damn it)
II. Did try to kill the hero but didn’t think to confirm they were dead (Cesare Borgia, Templar and megalomaniac, who gets his Renaissance snipers to shoot Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood protagonist Ezio Auditore off a rooftop while executing Ezio’s uncle – but then just assumes Ezio didn’t survive the fall, which allows the assassin to recover, stop all his evil plans, and eventually shove HIM off a roof, much more fatally)
III. Or actively helped the hero stay alive while doing things to piss said hero off, apparently never guessing the hero would come after them (Lionel Starkweather, who actively guides Manhunt protagonist James Earl Cash through his snuff film set death maze to kill all the other people in it...and also kidnaps Cash’s family and kills them, apparently not realizing this would lead to Cash deciding it would be nice to end the game by murdering him with a chainsaw)
Yeesh. Bottom line – if you have the hero at your mercy, just kill them already! It will dramatically increase your lifespan, and your minions will probably thank you.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I decided to use this week’s queue to get some random stuff sitting in my drafts out and about, plus give an old Song Saturday another chance at love:
A) For Thursday, I queued up a photoset of pretty purple iridescent butterflies from “ur-daily-inspiration” (because who doesn’t love shimmery purple butterflies? :D)
B) For Friday, I queued up a set of Severance fanart featuring some of Helly R.’s best moments – like waking up on the conference room table after being freshly severed, and writing “LET ME OUT” across her forearms (because I still very much want to properly watch that show, but until I figure out a way to do so, I shall reblog fanart :P)
C) And for Saturday, I reblogged my old Song Saturday post featuring The Cure’s “Lovesong,” talking about how, yes, I think I’ve figured out how to put a Valicer spin on it (because I was going through the depths of the “#song saturday” tag and realized this particular post never got a note, so I figured I might as well bring it back)
So that’s that sorted for the rest of the week, yay~
Not bad, not bad. And now, even though it is NOT thunderstorming (yet, anyway), I am going to make a concerted effort to get off the computer and go to bed. Night all!