Month: June 2024

Don’t cross the streams! It’s bad when a whole asteroid becomes a meteor!

I managed to get some things done today! I ordered some stuff online, because I can do that from quarantine, I filled out PDF character sheets for the six (not eight!) classes in Perils and Princesses and added a bit to the adventure. Still needs somebody to talk to in case nobody picks the gift that talks to animals. Then I rewarded myself by going to Ayse’s skleleton factory and murdering forty-plus levels worth of skellies and getting covered in bones and arrows and crappy bows. It still wasn’t enough to enchant all my stuff because I didn’t think to take it with me, but I only need like eight more levels to finish. Then I can think about getting axe/shovel/hoe in enchanted diamond.

After a week of eating the same old food I bought just before testing positive, I doordashed some Thai food. Just the appetizer was enough for dinner, but that’s okay, I can eat more tomorrow.

I caught up on journaling, too.

Watched: She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 1-4: Too much pointless backstory, not enough animation budget.

Written: 158.

 

But I am still terrible at getting pictures of my cats.

Slept way in, was completely useless all day. I played Minecraft for a million hours, including a trading expedition that only got me a few emeralds but a lot of random ore, and enough levels to enchant my diamond chestplate. Then I brainlessly mined blackstone until I had two chests full. It was a lot of mining but now I should be good for building things that match my castle.

Non wanted to play Among Us, so we did, because we do that even in quarantine. I was not very good as a murderer, but I did kill some weird little Minion-looking guys.

Written: FAIL. Didn’t even manage to note down villain stats for the adventure I haven’t managed to playtest.

 

Alas, I am still in quarantine, so no food truck food for me or my viroids.

The on-call arrangement is changing, which necessitated a very long and confusing meeting. I think this plan is doomed because nobody really understands it, but we’ll see.

Smelted up even more levels, now I have a magic diamond sword!

Read: One Killer Problem (Justine Pucella Winans): High school murder mystery with many queer characters and also actual violence, nothing cozy. It’s almost like death is traumatic.

Written: Covid, but maybe it’s actually FAIL at this point.

Wobblies!

I once again didn’t get up at a reasonable time, but is it because I have Covid, or just because I suck. I did get up in time for the first meeting with the new grandboss, and did some very dumb work while vaguely listening to the CEO suck up to the head VC.

Eventually I stopped pretending to be useful and smelted up some levels in Minecraft. Not enough levels, but getting there.

Read: My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress vol 4 (Chisaki Kanai): Still not telling us anything about the ML’s secret backstory, but at least some of the crazed vampires know it.

Written: Kinda but not really?

Yes, let us refrigerate the world!

Did some more work today, even got on a call with a customer and got them going again. Still coughing, though.

Since I have my own anvil now, I went ahead and got all the books I want for my diamond gear, bringing me down to 23 credit at the Autonomous Workers’ Collective and Bookstore. I am going to need to mine/smelt/murder a lot more before I can get all the books onto the gear.

Read: “Goblins & Greatcoats” (Travis Baldree): I would definitely read a lot more about this goblin.

Read: Bitter Waters (Vivian Shaw): Greta Helsing and her vampire friends encounter an ethical conundrum, about which they have many feelings, because vampires are people too. Even extremely important vampires.

Read: Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends: The Figurehead Queen Is Strongest At Her Own Pace vol 1 (Yu Sakurai): Apparently all light novels with female leads start with them getting their engagement called off and exiled by the crown prince (who is an asshole). This one also gets her pre-reincarnation memories at the same time, but fortunately escapes to a country where she can engage her remembered foodieness. There are also fluffy animals, and political intrigue.

Written: Covid.

Christofascists are still big mad about it.

I slept in some, because my energy levels were low, but eventually got up and did some work-like activities. I am still testing positive, and now Marith is testing positive because I wanted to watch anime. Hopefully she will be only a little sick and get to rest up for a week.

I finally built a bridge to the Warped Forest biome, getting the achievement for visiting every Nether biome, and also put in signs so maybe other people can visit it. I have enough warped stalk and whatnot to last me for a while, though.

Read: Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 5 (Yu Yoshidamaru): Ogami is still kind of a horndog, but this is a fairly serious volume anyway, with thinking about their future and Yaginuma’s family being weird about letting go of him and such.

Written: Covid, but I’m not sure that’s an excuse any longer.

But would International Walrus Day be more surprising, or less?

Being sick is boring, so I was logged in to work, although I didn’t accomplish a huge amount.

Dave’s new base with the evil road and looming Sky Thing (apparently it produces mobs and drops them to their deaths) are very impressive. My Black Castle of Blackness is pretty wimpy in comparison. Maybe I need to rebuild it. But instead I tried to make a bridge across the lava sea to what I still think is a Warped Forest Biome, got blown up by a ghast, went mining to build up levels to enchant my diamond gear so ghasts can’t blow me up, and got quite a bit of ore before finally being murdered in a double sklelton ambush.

Read: The Dark Lord’s Daughter (Patricia C Wrede): A teenager from Earth is kidnapped to inherit a Dark Domain, which might go more smoothly if her adoptive mom and little brother weren’t also kidnapped. Intrigue, strange customs, no romance, great magical power but it’s the strange artifacts imported from Earth that end up saving the day.

Read: There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… vol 5 (Musshu, Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima): Still pursued by one beautiful girl, just finished with fake(?) dating another one, our main character runs away with yet a third girl, this one she has an actual crush on (even though she tries to deny any smooch-related feelings).

Written: Covid.

An important day for all water-soluble organisms!

I did not do anything even slightly useful today, but I was mostly conscious, just not energetic.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.9: That was a pretty terrible day for Blitz, but he both deserved it and asked for it. It was also a terrible day for Stolas, who really didn’t.

Read: The Splendid Work of a Monster Maid vol 4-5 (Yugata Tanabe): I thought the undercover maid jobs would go on forever, but no, the story is actually complete in five volumes, everything wrapped up!

Written: Covid.

Apparently at one time I really liked onion rings, and my brain still goes “onion rings! yum! we should get those!” but when faced with onion rings in person, they are too deep fried.

Jeremy wasn’t able to prep for Librarians Errant, so I had a chance to test my Big Bad Con adventure on people, if I was not too sick and could finish getting my act together. I wasn’t sure if I was too sick, so I went grocery shopping to see how sunlight and fresh air would make me feel, and then on the way home I picked up some Covid tests since I was still coughing and that was it for gaming.

You held out a long time, immune system. Good work.

Since I have a real disease instead of just a lack of commitment to capitalism, I felt justified in lying down for a nap, but then I was weirdly semiconscious for twelve hours.

Written: Covid.

Also Atheists Solidarity Day.

I did not go into the office today, which is for the best because I was already very slow and coughing.

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.21-23: Finally we get all the backstory and the villainous plan and Chise being blasé about being in people’s memories, and yet still a cliffhanger.

Written: 150 of editing.

 

This is the day when most of the team is in the office, but Coworkers L and T are both still out. We did find out what the deal is with the guy who buys us coffee, and he’s not here to directly fire us all. I’m not sure what I think of this reorg, though.

I am coughing a lot, but the last of my tests says it’s not Covid. Probably for the best that coworker K was masking in the office today.

After some burrowing around, I managed to come out at the shore of the lava sea, and found both a nice deposit of glowstone I could reach with scaffolding, and something across the lava sea that looks like it might be the right color for a Warped Forest biome. Not sure how to get there, though.

Read: Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 2 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): Various interactions, life outside the castle drags people in different directions, and a surprising revelation.

Read: My Happy Marriage vol 2 (Akumi Agitogi, Rito Kohsaka, Tsukiho Tsukioka): I don’t remember childhood friend being quite so awful in the anime. Stepsister is much the same, though.

Written: 141. I think I fixed the script, too.

Not a day we get off, but of course rich people aren’t going to celebrate a reduction in free labor.

Coworker T is also out sick today. The new guy who is part of the company in some mysterious capacity and is also in town took those of us who were in the office to coffee, which I guess was nice of him, unless he’s here to fire us all and replace us with ChatGPT, which cannot be ruled out at this time.

It turns out that what you find when you dig downward in the Nether is a long drop to a sea of lava.

Read: Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 1 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): Middle-schoolers who aren’t going to school get access to an extradimensional(?) castle where they can chillax, and also the possibility of getting a wish granted.

Read: 24/7 Magical Maiden Mimi (Mira Ong Chua): When people realize the nebbishy boy is the secret ID of the magical girl, they want him to be Magical Maiden Mimi all the time. This goes poorly.

Written: 156. All additions, no edits, so it doesn’t matter right now that I’ve found another bug in the script.

One for Jus.

I did not go into the office today, because I am lame, but I did do a few works and will go back tomorrow.

Coworker L tested positive for Covid today. I wasn’t sitting directly next to him at dinner, though, should be fine.

Added some more flatness to my domain and also refinished the tunnel to the Nether portal, but did not find much in the way of blackstone. Maybe I should just start tunneling down and see what I find.

Finished writing up Opal Fossil, Earth Genasi Rune Knight, for Kelsey’s D&D game.

Read: Scarlett Hart: Monster Hunter (Marcus Sedgwick, Thomas Taylor): Underage Victorian monster hunter hunts monsters while her rival tries get proof that it’s her and not her adult butler doing the hunting.

Written: 178.

Possibly there are cats who would enjoy that, but I don’t think mine would.

Monday is my day to work late, so I usually also start late, but there was an early all-hands that seemed to mostly be an excuse for the CEO to be big mad at people who don’t come into the office enough. Then I had a meeting with a customer that turned out to be scheduled exactly so I couldn’t make it into the office between the meetings. After that, the train was late, and the moment I got into the office to find my desk had been taken over (by either my boss or boss’s boss so it wasn’t like I could shove everything onto the floor) and no one else in my team was in, a special case came in and none of the floater desks had any spare power outlets for the special case laptop. I was very cross.

After that things settled down, but then we had a team dinner because boss and boss’s boss are in town, which wasn’t bad, but it was a lot of people inside a restaurant and I didn’t escape until almost 21:00, so I got home at practically bedtime.

Read: Witch of Thistle Castle vol 3 (John Tarachine): I guess random violence at a school is more shocking in the UK (or Japan)?

Read: The Inconvenient Life of an Arousing Priestess (Makino Maebaru, Hachi Uehara): Healing magic sends the life energies into overdrive, with predictable effects. Instead of realizing this means the gods approve of sex, the main character’s homeland has gone all in on patriarchy, double standards, etc, but fortunately she falls in with someone from a better country after she gets exiled and gets to show how extremely amazing she is at every aspect of anti-monster operations.

Read: The Splendid Work of a Monster Maid vol 3 (Yugata Tanabe): Further adventures of monster maids in Spookytown looking for lost magic.

Written: 238 somehow.

Slept in a bunch, because on-call doesn’t start until 13 o’clock, then watched the notifications while branch mining a bunch more of the bowels of the earth and finally making a full set of diamond armor and a diamond sword. Now if only I had the levels to enchant them…

Also caught up a little on journaling. I should probably just make draft posts instead of keeping notes in /tmp.

Read: “The Sound of Children Screaming” (Rachael K Jones): It’s like the Madoka Magica of child portal fiction.

Read: “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” (P Djèlí Clark): That is such a supervillain plan. I hope the kraken is okay with it, though.

Read: “Better Living Through Algorithms” (Naomi Kritzer): “What if AI, but not evil?” It’s retreading ground that was visited decades ago (not that I can find the story because web searching is a thing of the past) but it’s even more relevant today, so that’s fine.

Read: “The Mausoleum’s Children” (Aliette de Bodard): A story about escaping the terrible place, and the people who didn’t escape.

Written: 129 according to the script. Does that feel like how much work I did, even though it was editing and not adding? I guess maybe?

No mermaid sightings today. Not even manatees.

Tomorrow I am on call in the afternoon, so I had to run all my weekend errands today. Food for me, food for the cats, drinks for me, lying in front of the fan.

My Minecraft character now has a good bow again, since even a terrible bow will give a fair bit of durability, and anybody who fishes (Dave. Dave is the one who fishes) will have a million bows with very low durability. Also I went to see the Ice Spikes biome (spiky!) and then delved into the depths to get diamonds to make armor and a sword now that I have enough bookstore credit to enchant them.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 19-21: Well, that seems bad.

Written:182.

Not sure going to the office yesterday was really a good idea, I am pretty useless today. More than usual, I mean, or maybe I just feel more useless than usual but am actually always at nadir.

After being useless at work, I played way too much Minecraft. I added a bunch more flat land to my domain, set a bunch of it up as farmland to grow my cash crop (carrots), put down and shoveled up gravel until half of it had turned into flint and my carrots were ripe, took a shulker box full of carrots to trade for emeralds, and mined about fifty stacks of sand to trade for credit at the enchanting bookstore. The hill of sand I found is rapidly turning into a bump of sandstone.

Written: 155. It’s all terrible because I played too much Minecraft.

Thursday isn’t a particularly cursed day, but it is sacred to Thor, so I guess Christians get -1 on saves vs lightning on Thursday the 13th?

Went to the office, ate a salad thing, did a work, made up for having a leftover lunch yesterday by taking Coworker L’s unused pork curry home for dinner. Caught up a little on journalling, but not enough to make up for all the days I failed.

Read: Across the Dark Water (Richard Kadrey): A grim cyberpunk/zombie apocalypse quest novella.

Read: Black Night Parade vol 1 (Hikaru Nakamura): Hapless convenience store worker is kidnapped by the evil black Santa (the one who brings coal and switches, and takes bad kids away in a sack) to work at the North Pole with a gang of weirdos. I feel like I’m not getting the tropes and cultural references enough to appreciate it.

Read: My Stepmother & Stepsisters Aren’t Wicked vol 1 (Otsuji): Not quite 4-koma but very short pieces about a girl who thinks she’s in the Cinderella role but her stepfamily, though scary, are actually super-nice (if somewhat eccentric). It’s cute, but seeing the same twist every two pages is a bit much.

Read: Ambassador for Mars (Glynn Stewart): The doom from Chimera’s Star is playing out in roughly the expected way, but with a lot more complications.

Read: Grimwild preview (JD Maxwell): D&D with less archaic rules, explicitly intended to be the new Dungeon World. Mostly FitD, at least what’s in the preview. The magic system needs to be better defined.

Written: 137. Instead of leaping right into throwing out the second draft of the current scene and editing the first draft to give my script a workout, I skipped to the next scene to get some momentum or something. Mostly something.

I meant to go into the office, but I slept so terribly that it just wasn’t happening. I hope somebody enjoyed my grilled salmon and baklava. Did a small work.

Did a lot more flattening of terrain in Minecraft, which isn’t exactly productive, but is oddly soothing.

Written: 367. I thought the script was off by one, which can be the most annoying errors to find, but no, I changed one word in addition to adding 366, so it was spot on!

The site I use to find out what day it is has imploded, so for the moment, they’re all just days.

Played: The D&D character generation game. Usually I’m the one who has no ideas, but Kelsey asked the right questions or something. Opal Fossil, an earth genasi rune knight fighter seeking out the ancient wisdom of the giants who had a much closer connection to the primordial nature of the universe etc etc. She has a big fucken maul +1 and rune powers. 9th level, so there’s all kinds of 5E fiddly bits I have to fill in, but surely I can do that in the next two weeks. Then I hear we’re going into a dungeon!

Written: Finished up the script. It seems to work correctly despite being a complete bodge of diff and sed pipelines.

Yum, flavor.

Even though I have to work late on Mondays, I had a surprise 8am meeting to interview a guy for a thing. He seems like an okay guy, but who can be actually great at 8am?

Read: Mage-Queen’s Thief (Glynn Stewart): Book 12.5 or so of the missiles in space where magic SF technology is actual magic, and the queen has finally found a boy who is not meh. Pity he’s a career criminal and also everybody is dead.

Read: Bloody Waters (Jason Franks): An aspiring rock star makes a deal with the devil (not for guitar skills, she has those) and rock and roll skulduggery ensues. This version of the devil is pretty chill, but don’t think you can get one over on him, no matter how confident you are.

Read: Chimera’s Star (Glynn Stewart): Book 14? The current generation of protagonist finally makes contact with the outer edges of the major setting element that has been lurking since book 3 or so.

Written: Gave up on fiction for now, started working on a script to quantify how many words I’ve edited instead of just counting words I’ve added. Will it work? Maybe. Will it make any difference? Also maybe.

Hi Earl!

Also Writer’s Rights Day, but that sounds like it’s probably a thinly-veiled move for copyright maximalism.

Played: Librarians Errant. Another quick expedition into Bibliospace, another tussle with mad books and thesauri, the life of a junior librarian is always intense. Then an assortment of tasks that all collide with Club Fair Day, where Beasley Knees is once again performing a summoning that can be interrupted by Lily’s pet monster book, resulting in crocodiles and mad cows everywhere. (The book definitely has some beef with Beasley.) Filling a campus quad with crocodiles is more impressive than filling a vault with crocodiles, but the lack of novelty reduces it from “holy shit, crocodiles everywhere” to “ugh, crocodiles everywhere”. The one crocodile Lily gets to talk to is actually very nice, but the rest are just a big mess that have to be put down. Sadly, the Entrepreneurship major who scammed the team’s kobold friend Toctasnir out of a bunch of money by monopolizing textbooks is not eaten, because Thaïs is not a murderer.

Did some flattening of hills to make my Black Castle of Blackness stand out more and also have room for expansive carrot farms. Mining out one block at a time takes forever, though. Maybe I’m supposed to be making TNT?

Written: 116. This is the worst.

Really, shouldn’t 259 days out of the year be World Oceans Day?

I managed to do some errands (but not all) and fail to get temporary checks printed out and still get home in time to play Minecraft be on call. The customers were quiet so I finished the exterior of my castle and the art installation/8-channel lavamatic in the basement, and made a proper setting for my Nether portal. Muahahahaha.

Ayse did not Minecraft with us, because she was busy publishing fanfic on AO3! (It was about a Minecraft actual play or whatever they’re called.) I am very proud of her!

Watched: Nothing, Marith doesn’t want to fall out of the habit of Saturday Night Anime but she also doesn’t want to die.

Written: 127. Still all terrible.

Apparently I am not a good atheist, because I got no hugs.

I did get up early because Friday is now the day of regular 8am meeting to go with the regular 9am meeting and people who have the late schedule on Friday just get to suffer. (The alternative is to make it a different person every week, which would be even more annoying.) Someday I will learn to sleep, maybe.

After mining three zillion iron to make a zillion buckets, I finally got my entire lava lake picked up (four chests full of lava buckets!), but I can’t figure out how to put it down so that it’s all smooth.

Read: Service Model (Adrian Tchaikovsky): A robot valet, having lost his job for obvious yet mysterious reasons, must make his way in the world, finding out what it is like (not good) and why it is that way (also not good).

Written: 105.

Rather have National New Eyes Day.

I didn’t go into the office today because I’ve already used up my office clothes for the week, but it turns out the office wasn’t closed for Wellness Day, so maybe I should have anyway? But I didn’t.

Read: Moonstorm (Yoon Ha Lee): It’s like The Machineries of Empire for YA: proper ritual behavior modifies the laws of physics, space conflict, depraved technologies but not as much personal depravity, divided loyalties, more Korean-flavored, etc. They don’t seem to be in our universe for a variety of reasons, but I can’t tell if that’s just magical realism or an actual plot point.

Written: 211, but this draft is really not as good. Ugh.

Do Impossible Burgers and the like count? Because those are good.

Went into the office again, ate some chicken strips, did some work.

Read: The Wrong Dead Guy (Richard Kadrey): Further adventures of the hapless thief who got recruited by the Men in Black and cannot stay out of trouble. There are plenty of dead guys in these hijinks.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 2-3 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Frieren continues retracing the path of the quest to destroy the demon king, picks up another short-lived protege of one of her old party members, and reveals some of why she is utterly terrifying.

Played: Minecraft. To smooth out this lava lake, I’m going to have to scoop it all up and put it all back down, which is going to require a lot of buckets. Time to start branch mining at Y=+16, I guess!

Written: 217 of Big Bad Con adventure notes, since I had some thoughts. I should try to get it tested or something.

Check!

Because the office is closed on Thursday for Wellness Day and also there is no gaming tonight (Ken is on vacation), I went into the office today. It was not particularly more useful than not going to the office, but hopefully I get points for showing willingness. Ate a pizza, did a work, chatted with my boss because he’s here this week.

Read: I Married My Female Friend vol 2 (Shio Usui)

Read: Flying Witch vol 10 (Chihiro Ishizuka): That’s why I didn’t recognize the new characters in 11 and 12, because I hadn’t read 10 where they were introduced!

Played: Nothing, Ken is on vacation.

Written: 171.

 

Really a pretty swell invention, even though I haven’t used one in ages.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.7½: The Sally Mae-visits-Millie special. A bit of the old ultra-violence.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.8: Marith is right, the fic writers already watched this episode 377 times in simulation and knew how it was going to go, but that didn’t make it less painful. And Blitz was almost a functional adult for some parts of the episode! (Loona, as usual, was secretly MVP.)

Watched: The Ancient Magus’ Bride 2.17-18: All the pieces of the doom are converging!

Written: 132.

This time I slept in on purpose, which obviously makes it much better, and woke up in plenty of time to run errands and then spend 9234562349 hours playing Minecraft. I finished moving stuff indoors, then mined an Imperial buttload of netherrack and smelted it all into nether bricks to make the bottom and edge of my moat. My mining tunnel got to a deposit of basalt (meh, I can make it at home) and blackstone (vital for any proper black castle) but then a stupid piglin leapt in the way of my pick and got mad and I ended up back home. I’ll have to go back and mine more blackstone later.

My castle isn’t even complete and I’m already planning a Nether garden for my portal. Not sure how far I can move it from its current position before it generates a new portal in the Nether and messes up the rail line, though.

Written: 201.

DInosaurs, milk, olives, pineapples, black bears, hazelnut cake, nail polish, …

I accidentally turned off my alarm, so I ended up sleeping in until after noon without even meaning to. No dinosaurs for me! However, I did make it to errands and back home in time for Saturday Minecraft. Marith showed me her village and fishpond and evil shrine and ginormous cavern, which were all very nice, definitely better than my black castle of blackness. I also got a bunch of stuff moved from the temporary work camp into the black castle of blackness, and barrels with signs so possibly I can find things.

Ayse did not play Minecraft with us because she was busy finishing up and posting her Minecraft SMP fanfic to AO3. I don’t know anything about the source, but it is a good story in its own right and gives me Amber vibes.

Watched: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts 17-18: Apparently that wasn’t the final boss of the season, but he was super-annoying anyway.

Written: 242