Tag: minecraft

Also National Eat a Hoagie Day, which I did.

Played a little Minecraft after failing to do anything for weeks, checked out Marith’s base which is a maze of lava and villagers and art and now fish, still not sure what if anything I want to do next. I could build another thing now that Dave has told me how to make copper bulbs light up. Marith offered to let me build it in her Cavern of Wonders, but it might actually belong on  top of the ridge of cherry trees. I could try the trial chamber that Ayse and Dave found, but I’m pretty sure that I would just die instantly with my basic enchanted diamond gear and no skillz.

Ayse has been doing lots of writing, because she is smart and talented and her brain has the basic functionality of doing things, which mine doesn’t. Good for her!

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 13-14: Extended flashback to when Dazai was a Port Mafia bigwig. Unsurprisingly, this looks like it’s going to end poorly.

Nightvale might have made a small miau? It would be noisy, yet adorable, if he learned that from Sage.

Written: 172, for all that’s worth (which is nothing).

 

We can’t all have our checkup today, especially since it’s Sunday and non-ER doctors are off. But it’s scheduled for Thursday, so close enough.

I woke up and fed the cats, but then I returned to my bed to work on daily phone games, and Sage came to sit on my feet so I couldn’t go anywhere. After hugging me with her teeth for a while, she fell asleep, still on my feet, and then it was noon.

Once I was free to move about the planet, I did some more errands, brewed some potions, messed up some other potions due to misunderstanding the system for enhancing them, and built a tunnel for easy access to water so I could harvest pufferfish for potions of waterbreathing. Going to the Nether to hunt magma slimes for magma cream is probably more useful, though.

Read: Teens on Pacts (Diego Barreto): An extremely minimalist cross between Apocalypse Keys and Monsterhearts. Possibly too minimalist to be played without the creator.

Written: 129.

Time to lie on the savannah for three days!

Did the usual grocery shopping and sandwich eating, then returned home to play Minecraft. I got some more blaze rods, patched up the stairway to Ayse’s nether fortress after stray blazes set it on fire, and crafted a brewing stand.

No anime, Marith wasn’t up to it.

Written: 161. Also I deleted about 11809 dead words, but I can’t count that, it would be ridiculous.

I think I celebrated this yesterday when I was talking with Ayse about Minecraft Youtubers and fanfic and all kinds of things, but every day should be Friendship Day. Or maybe Capybara Day.

No gaming because Jeremy is still full of Covids, and it was probably just as well because apparently I have to have my balcony cleaned off for painting by Tuesday. Lugged a lot of stuff downstairs to put on the curb where I am assured the city will take it away for disposal, did some errands, lugged some more stuff. Only one of the things was heavier than I should have carried, and I don’t think I actually injured myself. The cats were very distraught by all the weird stuff coming through their living room, though!

Managed to find the correct blaze spawner and murder some blazes for their rods without dying excessively. Also bred some bees and oxidized some copper.

The doctor appointment I have this week is not the one I thought it was, so I have to figure out how to get to the place for a blood draw before Thursday. I guess Wednesday morning on my way in to the office. Ugh.

Read: Noss & Zakuro vol 1 (Rariatto): Comedy about a mother-daughter pair of vampires who live in Spookytown and have monster friends and drink blood from juice boxes. Cute but not super-interesting.

Read: The Lost Souls of Benzaiten (Kelly Murashige): A Japanese-American girl who is so traumatized she no longer speaks after a horrible betrayal prays to the goddess Benzaiten to be turned into a Roomba. That does not happen, but quite a few other things happen, because the goddess has Opinions, and also problems of her own.

Written: 141.

Hi Jus!

Still testing negative, although I actually started too early so I should test a couple more times before declaring victory.

Successfully did some shopping, played some Minecraft (blazes suck), visited people for anime and conversation and hugs.

Watched: Bungou Stray Dogs 1.7-9: That’s a very strange condition for a power. How did they even find out about it?

Written: 101.

I don’t seem to like chicken fingers (strips, tenders, whatever) anymore. It is very sad.

Did several shops today, so the cats can continue to feast upon gooshyfoods. Also did some more landscaping and copper-oxidizing and whatnot in Minecraft.

Read: United Fleet (Sean Fenian): More improbably-successful wish-fulfillment with alien shipyard and asking people to be reasonable.

Written: 149.

Technically I was on call today, but only as backup in case the weekend shift (we have that now!) ran into something they couldn’t handle, but they didn’t, so I guess I’m fairly gruntled. I was much less gruntled with my whole endealment yesterday and the day before.

I felt a little queasy so instead of getting a big wad of pastrami and sauerkraut, I had a normal roast beef sandwich while doing my shopping and it worked very well. Good job, me.

I did a little landscaping in Minecraft. A diamond shovel with Efficiency 5 just tears through hills, but it also tears through bees that wander into the line of fire, so I had to take a break to go recruit some bees from another hive and breed them up and stuff. Still haven’t managed to set up a flat place for aging copper.

Shoulders still sore, weather still hotter than I would prefer, but embodied existence not much more unpleasant than usual today.

Holy crap, what happened to Republicans thinking “gun control means being able to hit your target”?

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 1-3. I have seen some episodes of this, but did not remember the way [SPOILER] walks in and goes “nice comedy show you got here, let me BLOODILY DISMEMBER it”.

Read: No Man’s Land (Elliott Kay): My reading list says I read all previous books in this series, but I don’t remember any of the new alien threat events that this book follows on from. I was able to figure out what was going on well enough that I didn’t feel a need to immediately go back and reread, although I may at some point. Also, I hadn’t remembered that main character’s original job in his local armed forces was specifically preventing war crimes, but there need to be more people on that duty. Also also, extremely worrying details about aliens. I feel like the humans are not scared enough of the Krokinthians, never mind some of the new guys.

Read: Buck the Halls (Zoe Chant): I thought I had read all of Kit’s “Virtue Shifters” novellas except the latest, but no! I had somehow not read this one! I really liked it, because Inner Stag! Tragic Antlers Incident! Additional, Possibly Even More Tragic Antlers Incident! Also no sex and I didn’t miss it, so I must be old now. (Narrator: What does he mean “now”?)

Written: 368, somehow. I guess it’s easy to write a 13-year-old being dramatically depressed?

I end up typing as much as I can these days, but I still carry a mechanical pencil with me, just in case.

Today I was still on vacation again, and also it was very hot, so I didn’t get much done IRL. I did relocate my Nether portal to be on the same elevation as the other portals on the Nether side, and created a portal for the skeleton farm so it’s easier to reach. My interior design was so bad that Ayse had completely rebuild the Overworld side, but it did work, and now I have a full set of enchanted diamond tools and only 9 credit left at the AWCAB.

In the evening I bestirred myself to finally, finally, go and get a new phone. In one swell foop I more than doubled my iPhone level, and hopefully now I will see fewer messages about support being discontinued. The saleslady was very helpful in putting on the screen protector (which I usually misalign) and transferring everything over, and also I got a free Android tablet. However, the bus was very unhelpful on the way back, so you win some, you lose some.

Also the cleaners came, which took up a chunk of the afternoon but made my apartment less gross.

Read: I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 4 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Both class warfare and forbidden love in one volume! The MC’s obsessive memorization of the game is pretty OP, but it’s all for love, or something.

Written: 168.

To the extent the Supreme Court will let us not have kings, anyway.

I went back to Ayse’s skeleton farm to build up levels and complete my diamond suit. I broke the anvil, though, so I had to go home to finish up. Also I’m going to need to go back to drop off a new anvil.

In the evening, I trundled over to Monkeycat Towers to see fireworks. I meant to be on time, but was suddenly starving as I passed In’n’Out, which used up all my spare time but not any extra. I also meant to be not a plague vector, but Ken was extremely nervous, so we just stayed outside and I masked the whole time. There were fireworks on that side of the hill! There were fireworks on another side of the hill! There were fireworks here and there and the other place across the city! However, when Ken and Jus were going to drive me home (because the bus doesn’t run late on holidays) there was a large and alarming fire on the next hill over and there had to be a delay so that they could pack bags and cats in case of evacuation. I did eventually get home, though, and also nobody I know was incinerated.

Written: 113.

I really should have taken that advice, because it was 105 degrees (that’s 40 for our prospective Canadian overlords), but I did a couple of errands because I finally tested negative and wanted to get out of the apartment. Now I mostly just want to pack myself into the freezer.

Also planted some Minecraft plants, although I do not have the fancy automated farms like Dave and Ayse.

Read: Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans (Isi Hendrix): Being 12 and an orphan is bad enough without sudden evil magic busting out and everyone who could help having disappeared, never mind having to save the world. African setting, although horrible white people are invading.

Written: 221.

Just because you don’t know what it is doesn’t make an alien!

Did some work, had a Google meet with the team and the guy who is joining soon. He seems okay. Maybe too gung-ho, he might make me look bad, but I don’t need help with that.

Last day of work, I kept the rest of the week as vacation despite the lack of Roseville. Hopefully I will test negative soon so I can get some of the errands I’ve been putting off done. I did manage to throw out a couple of piles of stuff that I haven’t touched since I moved in, although there’s still so much to go.

Read: I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 1-3 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Modern person isekai’d into their favorite otome game scorns all the male love interests because she likes the snooty rival character much better (in a masochistic sort of way). I read the first two of this back when, but did not remember much of what happened when I got volumes 3-6. Now I remember!

Played: D&D5e. We finally started Kelsey’s adventure (I think it’s a module, but I have not looked so no spoilers), albeit without Vivian. Quin the half-elven bard/rogue Harper aspirant, Puck the fairy cleric/rogue trickster, and Opal the earth genasi rune knight successfully infiltrated the dungeon and beat the snot out of some horrible badger-hyena monsters, because you can do that when you’re 9th level.

Written: 213. Good thing I don’t have to get up tomorrow.

Also apparently the end of the US in all but name. Maybe Canada can conquer us and impose their Supreme Court?

I am still testing positive, but now the Pettersons are also testing positive so Roseville is cancelled for everyone.Boo Covid!

Did some work, built some stairs in Minecraft, that’s about it.

Read: Frenemies With Benefits (Lydia Sharp): She just wants to get some experience so she can seduce the boy she really likes, but then there’s a lot of sex and fake dating and real feelings and everything is a disaster until the drama gets resolved.

Written: 215.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.