2025-02-13:

Fri:
More writing! As expected. Christina was out again, probably should have been out the day before too, but you know us. So dedicated to our jobs.

Anyway, got another 1.5 chapters done, so I'm up to chapter 3. It's going fairy well! Sorry, only two people will understand that joke at this point.

Yeah, nothing else really to report. Next week though- gonna be so great.

Did the shopping, saw my parents. Then back here for game.

Finally, finally finished episode 4. On to the next dungeon!

Sat:
Finished the Valentine's gift. Looking good. Well, I glued it and got the base done. So it's done, it just needs to cure.

Checked sites.

Then out to printer guy. That was fine, it literally was the same model so I just unplugged the old one and plugged the new one in. Answered some questions, started an OS update. Why is his download speed so slow?

Back for lunch, then out again for the setup. 3 hours, at least the copy went quickly. SSD to NVME so it was about as good as it can get. Of course he didn't turn it on and set it up to the desktop as I instructed, so I had to wait like half an hour while it updated. Why does it have to do that, MS? It's really annoying. He got "stuck" on the "add another layout" which i admit is a weird thing to be asking 99% of people. Who don't use another keyboard layout. Those that do should probably figure out how to do so on their own, rather than bothering the rest of the 99%. But I guess that "skip" button was just too intimidating so there it sat. Thanks dude. I mean yes, I had to change the permissions on his files so that was going at the same time on the old laptop but still. I could have been loading stuff instead of sitting there doing nothing.

Back here, checked in with the weather and stuff. An advisory, but we're still on I think. Then Adam was all like "we're doing game today?" LOL. This game is cursed.

But it went ahead. Adam was there. We beat up some shadow demons, didn't get any new information but maybe now that we're in the library and have met someone there that's I guess been there forever maybe we can make some progress. Drive home wasn't too bad.

I did get double nerfed, but by the end of the session it didn't really matter. Sean was concerned I guess about the amount of dice I was rolling. Joke's on him. I no longer have to roll any dice to use the telekinesis spell I rely upon. It's cast automatically without me doing anything, and I get 7 (8 after the next session) hits which is almost impossible to resist. So there. As for the summon, I always have that up so there's no rush. You only really have to worry about rolling dice in combat, though of course more is always useful because it gets stronger the more dice I roll. It'll be next on the "no dice" train in any case, just for the bonuses that gives. I won't go all the way like I did with TK because that actually nerfs the thing, so I'll keep the final roll that determines its stats, but it'll be cheaper and more powerful along the way.

Sun:
Packed up and wrapped the valentine's gift, it's all done and ready to go. Whew.
Did the daily reading.
Checked sites, videos.
Ate lunch.
Then did the driveway.
Read the latest chapter of Alyx's story. I'm not crying, you're crying!
Got my tax forms in order. Don't tell anyone I'll print them at work, it's a secret to everybody.
2 hours and a bit before I had to leave... Got ready for tomorrow as I'll be getting back late tonight because of the Big Game.
Finished the Magicraft run I started. It wasn't a great run. I still don't know how that guy does it. My damage numbers are nowhere near his! I'm going to have to play in the simulator more I think.
Then the Big Game. Which was a bit strange really. It was like one team was a group of professionals that deserved to be there, and the other team which supposedly had won 2 Big Games before this was a group of high school students accidentally bussed in. They got stomped on.

Mon:
And so what will probably prove to be a fairly busy week begins. Not looking forward to it. I already have two calls from last week I need to get to. I just haven't been home the past two days.
Need to test the final D8.0. (No email about it yet BTW) Do the Trunk D8.5 stuff. Tomorrow is a late meeting. Wednesday is bringing Oliver in for blood work. I need to do the pony chapters, I want to do the Library chapters and corrections from Alyx, then Saturday is the Mega Game. I'm not going to have any time for after work jobs this week. Unless I get to them super late, which I will absolutely love.

And it turns out it didn't happen. I messaged Don early, "when should we expect to be told about the go/no go for early testing" and he said we would be told sometime today. Neat. With that in my pocket of "I asked when, you said today, so I will not start until given the word" I went ahead with the pony chapter. 1.5 worth of content was created last week so I got through it. Whew. Then I worked on integrating the changes Alyx suggested for the Library. And that was the day. Never got told to start testing. So, I did not.

Thank goodness I don't have that to worry about for the rest of the week. I mean I don't need to keep up, but I feel not keeping up would be a bad idea.

Came home, one call just some questions from the guy I set the laptop up for it must be two weeks ago now?

So just three calls to make today.

Checked sites, had dinner. Last of pie. But not to worry I got cake yesterday!

Called everyone. One person I didn't reach. One person had made their chrome window small and of course didn't understand what was going on. The third person I reached but wasn't home. Have to call them tomorrow.

Got in some FF7, won't tomorrow... That's okay.

Tues:
Got the notice we can start testing. But late in the afternoon. I'll start tomorrow.

Had the Joe meeting in the morning.
And the late 4:00 meeting that didn't involve me in any way.

Otherwise I worked on Building Block Magic a little. In thinking about what spells to give my new fairy character I realized I hadn't put anything in the rules regarding how many spells a character should have. Whoops! I put in some tips. Then made her spell list. I think I'll put it in the rules as well, as an example of how distinguishing between weight of spell and weight of individual spell components can make a big difference in how many spells you get.

Came back here, no calls.

Checked sites, had dinner.

Reached the one guy. Did a "repair" on his scan app, of all things. It's a MS product. But when he opened it there was this blue bar at the bottom and it was seemingly hung up. So weird. That solved the issue. He couldn't demonstrate the quickbooks issue.

Didn't reach the other guy.

Got ready for tomorrow. Sigh, more snow just as I need to take Oliver in for his blood draw? Neat!

Wed:
Fairly good day actually.

As promised, I finished up the D8.0 testing I needed to do. It's just one last look and that last look was fine. Set all three to done!

Tomorrow I'll load D8.5 on the machine and.... do... all that testing.... again. So great.

Anyway, that only took the morning.

So in the afternoon I wrote the next Library chapter. Going fine, think I got some good jokes in there. As one does.

Came home early because of that late meeting yesterday. Searched for a good map to use, I offered to run a short battle for Alyx so they can use magic skills and such before it's a live fire exercise. They accepted, and so I wanted to get it ready today. I got the sprites, the map, I just need to get the stats of the creatures I have a mini plot already so I should be good to go.

Snowing when I left, but just snow, not icky freezing rain and such. So that's a relief. Still was awful coming home, very low visibility. But he got his blood drawn. No more weight loss, but no gains either.

One call. Took about an hour but it was productive at least. We figured her problem out.

Had dinner, checked sites.

Finished up prep for the mini-game tomorrow. Got the stats into the battleRunner. Wow, remember that? Had to bust out the old laptop. Paragon2 would run on the new one but not battleRunner. Odd. Anyway, that should be fine.

And it's 8:30.... hummm....

Went to bed.

Thurs:
Made sure I had the dungeon ready for tomorrow. I got 2 sprites for it, and read over the description. It's a pretty simple dungeon, hopefully they get through it? They've been typing in character in discord and I haven't read it all yet.

Proofread the chapter from yesterday. Added a little.

Did not start on D8.5. So lazy.

Had the afternoon meetings. Watered the plants.

Came back here, made the dungeon, it's just a box it was pretty simple.

Had dinner, got everything ready as I'm doing the runthrough with Alyx in a bit.

Checked sites.

Did the mini-adventure, sorry I can't give you any XP Alyx! I would if I could. Took a few hours, but I think they have a good sense of things. It's a lot of modifiers to keep track of for sure, and casting spells is fairly complex. Good to do it now before lives (such as they are) are on the line. Hope it helped!

Looking ahead we'll finish up the D8.5 stuff tomorrow for sure.
Joe is coming to look at the hardware I got and check the "directions" we got. Not that they are, I wanted to look at, you know, the directions. Not a bunch of screenshots. The real, final, pamphlet that the customer would see. But I guess that's not happening.

Then shopping, no bank, seeing my parents. Then running game.

Saturday is the mega game, I'll have to read the booklet about that before I leave. No big deal. Leaving at 12:00 to get over there. Maybe a little earlier. Early lunch I guess.

Then sunday back to normal, whatever that is. So the week wasn't too bad, but then it's not over yet.

Need to do my paperwork, annual sales tax is coming up. Need those numbers. Next week looks pretty clear, shouldn't be too many surprises.

I'll see you then.