2025-02-06:

Fri:
Nasty out. Raining, then snowing. Slush everywhere.

Still not much work wise. Had the friday meeting I spoke of. Talked about the new requirements, I guess we're not making the license expire after all. But we want to include some kind of "upkeep cost" which is just a license sooooo... what are we doing?

But there are still concerns I had.

Figured out what the mine boss wanted. Spoiler, they didn't go there. Sigh.

Did another proofread of the BBMagic. I think it's in the best state it can be for now. We'll have to see (if they ever get to the next dungeon) how they like the newer, simpler, magic rules.

Went to the bank, got yummy stuff for a father lunch, then saw my parents.

Did game. Got through one more "helping person" in Gianna's home territory. I think the rest of them are far shorter? I hope they are. This is turning into FF7 rebirth!

We ended at 10:30, I wanted to end at 10:00 well Sean wanted to end "early" so I picked that time. We had to finish up, and I hurried it along at the last second. But it was fine.

Sat:
Did some cleaning.
Then cleaned out the driveway. It was snowing pretty good but thankfully didn't accumulate too much. That went pretty fast.
Worked on the graphics for the site. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.
Then dad came for lunch, and dr who. Somewhat inconsistent tone between episodes, but we only watched 3. High School Musical right to war zone and several people being murdered by robots right in front of us, eh? Interesting.
Did a bit of magicraft, as I didn't feel I had time for FF7.
Still trying to paint the gift. There's just these weird spots the paint simply won't stick to!
Then left for Sean's.
No Ben, and he may not be back? Work stuff. We discovered we can't kill, wound, or really bind the Big Bad in any way. Neat. He got away (again) and we chased him (again) to a place. We have no plan for confronting him a third time.
Super, super cold on the way home. Like, -4 degrees cold. Yikes.

Sun:
Did the reading.
Finished the run. Beat the final boss, the producer, in the stupidest way possible. I wanted to do a "book" run, that's where you take a book, that you can normally summon 3 of which fight on your behalf, and have them summon 5 cute little pops. It just does whatever is next in the sequence. Well, what if "was next in the sequence" is a book? It's a book that summons books instead. So each book summons 3 books. But wait there's more. With the mimic cube I could make 3 books that summoned three books, and each of those three books summoned three books, and each of those books summoned 5 cute little pops. So. Many. Pops. His pops seemed way stronger, I see why in his screenshot he somehow got up to 200+% damage and I was at 20%. Huh. I figured it would be fine because I had so many pops, even a low damage attack repeated at that scale becomes a pretty high damage attack! But not so much? The final boss rush took so long to get through. I did get lucky and get the 4 slot spell that added a single effect to all four wands AND the magic shield that drains MP instead of health on a single wand. So I attached that to all four wands, which worked out because I wasn't using MP otherwise after my books were out. I become completely invincible. The last guy ignores my summons and just tries to stomp me. He couldn't damage me fast enough because my MP regen on the wands was so high, one could absorb damage, then it switched to the next, letting the first one regen back to full while he tried pounding that one down. That just repeated and I simply could not be hit. Meanwhile, he could take a sliver of damage every minute so it was no contest. I basically walked away, made a pie in the time it took for my summons to whittle this guy down and defeat him. Yes, the game simply played itself while I was out of the room, giving me the victory. Took like a half hour for him to go down. But it did work, which I guess is the whole point?

Anyway, made a pie!

Then FF7. The gift is as painted as it's going to get. I'll spray it with sealer once it's really dry and then I can sand down the edges and see about gluing it together. The tricky part.
Did the usual Sunday stuff in the evening, getting ready for the week. Made calls. Both put off, one guy keeps getting paper jams and is buying a new printer and one guy went to buy a laptop but the "deal" he wanted was online only so that was also put off.
Went back to FF7, I'm pretty close to finishing the second area, or at least the outer world parts. I've not gone near the town yet, who knows what that will make me do.

Mon:
Bit warmer out today, rain possible?
It did rain.

Not much excitement at work. Now waiting for the final D8.0 build to do a final test. No idea when it'll be.

What I did do was buckle down and did two chapters of the pony story. Used up the latest content. So I have the rest of the week to.... stuff.

Came back home, no calls. Things are looking up. Checked sites, had dinner.

Think I'll do some FF7, just to mix it up.
An hour.
That's about how long it took me to beat some random lady card player in FF7. Why does every FF game have to have a card game? The reason I play FF is not to play a card game inside the game I'm playing it's to play the game I'm playing. I kept trying to change up my deck, finally looked up how to beat her, and realized I could go all the way back to the "card shop" in the first area (at least they put a fast travel point at the ends) and get new cards. I did that. She still beat me a whole bunch. And it wouldn't be as painful, but the CPU opponent slowly chooses their cards. Slowly moves it into position. Just choose the card. Place it. Do it. You're a CPU, you picked it in .1 milliseconds and I don't need to see the animation again and again. I hate you. At least I figured out I could hit a button and skip the "intro." Finally beat her.
I don't know, maybe implement a timer "you've been trying this an hour, would you like to skip it and pretend you won?" I know, that's too "special snowflake" or whatever. Coddling the kids "back in my day you got three lives and we liked it. Go play NES ninja turtles and get back to me. Play two hours and then go back to the beginning. Actually, skip turtles just start with Ghosts N Goblins." Did they hold no "blind" sessions where poor suckers were told to test the game and ran into this? The much scarier thought is they did and the developers all said "this is fine! This is what we want. For our players to get stuck right here trynig to beat this random card lady that's only rank 3."
Wandered around town more, found a higher ranked player and figured I would see how badly I would be spanked playing this stupid fisherman now. I beat him the first time easily. HUH? Did someone playtest this? Did the algorithm get switched somehow? The card decks? How do I destroy a higher ranked player first time? Did I spontaneously become a queen's blood master in between games? This makes no sense.
Anyway, I like the town... that's something.
No search results for disabling the animation in queen's blood. Modders, heed the call to action! You've put in materia slots and changed the characters outfits. Do something productive for once!

Tues:
Had the morning meeting.
Did some work on The Library of Good and Evil outline. May have finished it, but do I want a "bad" ending? I mean I guess many stories do. I mean it's not bad, it's not the triumphant overthrow of the Dark Lord it's a realistic ending. I wonder.

Had the afternoon meeting, which mercifully was discussed not having it for some time. Yes, please.

Other than that, still just waiting for new software.

Came back here, cleaned up the kitchen. Mice are still a problem. Worked on the Valentine's gift. Sadly it did not work out. I can't put details here yet, but suffice to say I knew it had a chance of failure and that chance came true. Because this is the worst timeline.

I think I've redesigned it (in my head) so I only have to print half of it again, as I don't think the result will be suitable as a gift. I'll change it slightly so it's still most of the vision I had.

OH, of course I had dinner and checked sites. Had pie, obviously.

Did not reach a rambling guy talking about "getting back windows" and doing a restore on his PC?? You... closed windows and reached for the "restore PC" because you searched for "restore microsoft windows" instead of just... opening... the windows back up? I think he may actually be brain damaged.

Sean was watching a movie so no Xbox until later.

Got ready for tomorrow. Messed around in Magicraft. Didn't get very far, Sean's movie was done pretty fast.

Then xbox.

Wed:
Had a brilliant (in my humble opinion) about the gift. I've been thinking too big. Way too big. I think I can still salvage the whole thing, I just have to think smaller. Much smaller. Not as impressive, perhaps, but it'll work and that's the real key I think. I think it'll work. There's no reason why it wouldn't.

Work wise, not much to report. Christina was out, not feeling well.

Just read a new story, really. Got through book one. Nothing new to add to the magic system, but at least it's well written.

Came back here, made changes to the gift and started a print, as it's not 5+ hours anymore.

Checked sites. Had dinner.

Several calls. Didn't reach guy from yesterday, who called again and now makes it sound like he was just looking to get his tabs back? I still don't really know.

Then some people that moved away years ago. Didn't have mbam on their machine, and their internet was painfully slow so I just started the installer and told her click scan when it finished.

Then the lady with the new mac had some basic questions.

Then the guy who got the new laptop, he wants Saturday so I have two for that day now.

And THEN the guy from yesterday got back to me. I think he really did restore his PC. But he was just talking about edge tabs? I'm still not sure, talking with him is very frustrating. We downloaded firefox and his winedt program anyway.

Wasn't enough time to do any FF7 after that. In fact I just got ready for bed.

Print finished. This may work out much, much better and save Christmas! Wait, wrong season. I stuck it together with a rubber band and it worked. Yes! There's still time and it won't need much. I sort of ruined the base but I can cover that. Yes, things are looking up.

It's going to be a busy few days from here on out though...

Thurs:
Not much to report at work but that will soon change. Seems we're getting the final D8.0 build sooner than expected, if testing goes well that is. By Monday. Rather than the 17th. We also have some trunk stuff to do, so I get to do all the tests twice, again.

As far as today goes, I actually started work on The Library of Good and Evil. Got a chapter and a half done. My finest work? Eh, who knows.

Had the usual meetings at the end of the day. Oh, and Christina still isn't feeling well. Boo! Then watered the plants.

Came back here, got ready for tomorrow. Going to Alyx's place tonight for "hanging out and occasionally crafting" so I'm bringing my unicorn. No calls yet, thankfully.

So let's look ahead now, as I'll be posting this early. Not that I'm staying for too long, but as you know I like to get things done.

Tomorrow probably just writing. Nothing until Monday unless something odd comes in. Then shopping, seeing my parents, and running game. Saturday is two jobs, the printer setup (if he got it) and the laptop setup. Then over to Sean's for the color game. Hopefully we find this "library" we're after and it gives us some answers.

Then Sunday I want to finish up the Valentine's gift, I've already got one coat of paint on it, so I just need to glue it after perhaps another, and I think it'll be fine. Oh right the destroyed base. That shouldn't take too long to fix either. I have realized I probably could have made the bigger one work. I may actually try that, and just make one to sell? Don't know. Anyway, Big Game that night at my sister's house for my father's birthday which was days ago. As one does.

Next week it's taking Oliver to the vet for bloodwork, a late 4:00 meeting on I think Tuesday, no Sean game until the 22nd. So much more work, not that these tests will take me more than a day if I get right on them. It's the final, so it just needs a sanity check. That's the usual procedure anyway. And trunk is only one release as well.

So that's that. Hopefully things calm down a little after this, so I can do lots of FF7.

See you next week!