Pretty busy up to today, but let me return to the weekend. Game went… slowly. More slowly then usual, that is. We didn't get too far, but it's not about the destination anyway, right?

 

Got up early on Monday to take Tinker in. Didn't go home to uselessly wait around fifteen minutes before going back the exact same way, so I just waited in the bank parking lot. Then did shopping, because I'm a person who does things at the same time every week.

 

Went early to the medical place in LeRoy. Passed Sean's, and thought about dropping in to wish him a happy birthday in person. Didn't. Because I'm a person who doesn't doesn't do that. The medical place just wanted their printer settings changed. Somehow the IP address was all wrong. So I basically drove for longer then the job took. At least I got the check in the mail the next day.

 

Then over to help a guy for an hour fill out a web form because he has no computer. To his… credit? he was filing for unemployment because of (apparently) a seat belt violation for the trucking company he worked for. But he had a cell phone, so figure that one out.

 

Then to set up a printer, which went smoothy.

 

Tuesday I had four. The first needed a total reload. It would blue screen in safe mode running combofix. Wow. I tried it twice to be sure, and yup, same exact place. I took the machine with me. It was a crappy little dell, no faster then my little hackbook (wait, what did I name that?) that plodded along for the reload the entire evening.

 

Next was a very boring place. Here's what you do when an expert (the kind of person I am) comes to answer your questions. Ask them questions! Don't sit there tediously deleting emails. The one thing she ran into I squarely blame microsoft for. She opened a word attachment from her email. She made changes. She saved it. Of course, doing it that way meant she just saved a word doc into a temporary area she would never find. On the Mac they go into a folder called "mail downloads" which seems appropriate. 

 

Way to choose the wrong way of doing things, once again, microsoft programmers.

 

Then the third one was a busted hard drive. Ran chkdsk four times before it said it hadn't found errors, but after booting it it just sort of sat there. I ran the manufacturer's tool and it got 20% done before saying "failed".

 

So he wound up paying me $80 to reload XP onto another hard drive he had in the machine. A machine like his I would put a $20 refurbished hard drive in (from newegg, because I'm the kind of person that shops at a place I get good prices, and fast shipping) and hope I got $40 for it a couple of months from that time. I told him so straight out. (Even though I am not the kind of person that volunteers information. It needed to be said) but he went full steam ahead. I'll tell you of another poor decision the next day in a few paragraphs.

 

Last was getting the guy with the brand new machine back up after Dell came and replaced his hard drive. At least he put windows back. But you would think they would set the machine up as close to how it was when they got there as possible. Guess that's just me.

 

That evening I wandered around Pandora finding stuff and reloaded that laptop.

 

In the morning I returned the system from last week, then at 11:00 went to see someone with a system that was powering itself off. She only had dial up (because she's a person that thrives on making bad decisions) so I couldn't get her a price for a replacement. It got worse while I was there. I tried a new power supply and it did the same thing. Then I tried a couple of different processors I had, but they were too old, I guess. Then I put her processor back, and it started beeping at me when I turned it on! AARG. 

 

The only motherboard for the machine, which is the only thing left the problem could stem from, was on ebay for $100. Plus $10.00 shipping. With $40 labor that's $160, or half the cost of a new machine, to keep something from five years ago running. Not too bright, in my estimation. (Because I'm the kind of person with strong opinions)

 

Then in the afternoon I had things go much smoother then I anticipated. A RAM exchange took only a few minutes. (apparently I'm the kind of person who sells faulty RAM. I replaced his 256+512 combo with a 1gb for free, because that's all I had, and I'm the kind of person that feels guilty about things that don't work out like they should.)

 

Then over to see an old dude and get his all in one "all in oneing" which went fine. Then dropped off the tiny dell and saw cats. Siamese cats, if you please. They were Siamese if you don't please. I had planned to get there at 7:00 because I'm the kind of person that plans for things to go wrong so I leave plenty of time between things, but I was pleasantly surprised to get home, done, before 6:00. 

 

Today I did… well, I wish I could tell you. It's not bad or gross or crass or illegal but it relates to a christmas gift for a certain someone, and I'm quite excited about it actually. I think it will work out very well. Now I just have to get the equipment to actually make the thing. Then I have to find where to put it. Not going to be easy. Anyway, I'll be sure to post pictures of the final product in about… two months time.

 

Note: only two months until Christmas. Yawza.

 

Had a couple of calls today, but it's not yet 7:00 so who knows. I do have one for tomorrow, at 10:00. I'll probably have more.

 

Let's see, game saturday, possibly finishing up the last leg of the Demongate Bridging Adventure and it'll be onto the new game. Made some tweaks to my new character (because I'm the kind of person who can't leave well enough alone).

 

For those not in the "know" a character is defined by their backgrounds, which cost varying levels of points. For 4 points she became a Shaman and can talk to nature spirits, also summoning her totem spirit (the ant, who I have named Anthy) to fight on her behalf. She can also take weaknesses to get more points, for example she needs to wear glasses which is worth 2 points. (without them she takes a -4 penalty to seeing things) Try to follow along now: The totem spirt also can buy things with points, in this case, it gets the same number of points as she has personality. (don't ask) So she could take seven, 1 point powers or one 4 point and one 3 point power, etc. She took being able to summon up an energy blast for 2 points. Following me here? However, an ant has 6 legs, but by default a totem only gets 4 "limbs" so you can see the problem. I bought her an additional two legs with 2 of Liz's points. This is the crux of the matter. 

 

This week I said, "hold on a minute" and rethought things. "Why," I said to myself, because I'm the kind of person that talks to himself, "do I take this one power for two points when becoming a spirit energist, (able to not only throw energy blasts around but also make barriers, steal energy, etc) is only THREE points?"

"I have no idea," I answered myself.

 

So I struck that power from the rolls, and moved the two legs into its place. That freed up 2 points for Liz, and she dropped one of her one point backgrounds and she became a Spirit Energist/Shaman/Copycat Master.

 

The trick is that the projection, being a part of a Shaman's very soul, has all the powers the Shaman has. So it also is a Spirit Energist/Shaman/Copycat Master. So now it doesn't have to buy the ability to throw energy blasts, it can do it naturally.

 

Also Liz can now make barriers, steal energy, charge energy into actions, and can summon a CHAINSAW from total nothingness, made of energy, which is weightless. She can summon "a weapon" made of energy and I was thinking something useful, because she's not an "in your face" fighter. Even Anthy is going to rely on flying away from things and energy blasting them. So I was thinking a chain, to tie things up or climb on, and was reading the weapon list over. "OH HO there's an entry for Chainsaw!" So I cleared it with Sean and now she can wish up her very own chainsaw at a whim. 

 

I love this module.  

 

So here's the breakdown. Liz can call upon spirits to aid her and her friends, giving them a very, very wide array of abilities (temporarily). She can summon Anthy to fight on her behalf. (Who is as unkillable as I can make her, by the way. The normal person has 12 "health". Anthy has over 200) She can pull out her chainsaw at any time. She can take a few seconds and unleash energy blasts to crack mountains. (once or twice a day, but how many times per day do you need to unleash that kind of force, I ask you?) And she can copy any ability she sees performed, as long as she "catches" the power before it dissipates. 

 

I know, you probably don't care about all that, but I'm really looking forward to playing Liz. I mean, Carlita worked out really well and I'll be sorry to see her go. I came to her late, by accident, and while I shaped her in a way Sean probably didn't intend, and made her super powerful, she still wasn't what I would have chosen for myself. But I made Liz from scratch, and with the question in mind of "What kind of character could beat Carlita up, or at least hold her own?"

 

I think I have my answer. We'll see how it turns out, but I'm very hopeful.

 

Otherwise, I have a Tinker on my lap, a Squeaker on the blanket on the couch, and phone calls to make in twenty minutes. My Aunt may be causing problems for us down the line, but that's to deal with then. I enjoyed my day of rest and am (not) ready to get back into the crappy world of windows tomorrow.