Cadence

OH HI THERE. I'M ALIVE I SWEAR.

I've been back for a couple weeks now, but I need to set up a video schedule again. I've just had zero motivation to do...well a lot of things. Vacation was all right, but the lake is even worse this year than it was last year health-wise. The zebra mussels have spread and there's just millions upon millions of razor-sharp shells all over the beaches and in the water attached to the rocks. These things have apparently been in the Great Lakes for a number of years, but they've finally reached Lake Winnipeg and started multiplying like crazy. They've been clogging up pipes and ruining swimming areas. They suck all the nutrients and healthy algae out of the water, killing everything but the dangerous blue-green algae which is caused by extra phosphorus in the water from farmland run off. Two people cut their feet on these while I was out there. I had a close call but I have a lot of experience in those waters with the rocks, so I've learned to step lightly.

It's just hard seeing the lake and place I love slowly change for the worse. The lake is dying and currently there's not much the people who live and vacation around the lake can do about it other than scream into the void or try to take matters into their own hands and cause more damage as evidenced with the destruction of a shoreline due to an illegal, improper sea wall.

Other than my father nearly lighting the cottage on fire by leaving the stove element on and placing a wooden cutting board on top of it, the week went well. The weather was mostly good other than one unbearably hot night. No power outages while I was out there for once and I got through the majority of Sacred Stones in one week (playing it for like...the third time or something).

Oh and I think my Great Aunt was the catalyst for the construction of a $55,000 staircase down to the water due to her being stubborn. I...don't have all the details on that one yet.

Now I'm back home and it's back to the grind. One of the locks on our house broke due to metal fatigue so we were getting that fixed over the past week. My dog's skin is finally healing (he had some sort of allergic reaction likely due to him rolling in a disgusting mud puddle) and he's found new items to steal when he's bored including books now. My neighbour didn't call bylaw services on anyone while I was gone so...I suppose that's a bonus.

Now I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do with video and recording. I want to continue things, but part of it is finding time and part of it is just...wanting to do it. I've been more antisocial and feeling...off the past few weeks. Months if I'm honest. Then it gets worse and I feel guilty for not being around more. One bright side is I've picked up my writing again, and made the mistake of reading a bunch of it instead of just finishing it, and now I want to "fix" everything. Honestly I just need to commit myself to trying to finish projects/checking if people want to continue games on the same nights each week. That way even if people are busy some days, at least there's a higher chance of actually getting things done again.

It'll probably help with the mental block in the long run.

Undead

I am, quite frankly, exhausted. The house was way more chaotic than I anticipated, and the expectations of the people trying to sell it are hard to meet. I have a list of everything that needs to be done in my head, but like many large projects, I underestimate the time needed to complete that vision. My life has literally been packing, moving and cleaning since...Saturday or something. I've lost track of this.

I just have to keep the end goal in mind. Here's hoping we don't move again for a very long time.

The good news is I'm too tired to really be worried about not getting done in time/to be stressed out. The bad news is I'm pretty sure I'm getting sick. Also I managed to mess up my toe. There's like a whole chunk of my toenail missing on the one side and I have no idea how it happened. It never bled or anything. Maybe this means I'm undead.

Anyhow, will be leaving soon to deliver ketchup chips to the uncultured masses down south. I'll try to get some uploads up before I leave, but there's likely going to be less than the usual upload rate (which is like 4 videos a week currently -_-).

Also Shauna says I need to play Darkwood before Lunar-SSS, so cue all the innuendos from Mesk when he reads this.

Exodus...to the Boonies

Unfortunately, I will not finish Pyre before my exodus to the boonies for two weeks. I have a few more videos to post for it, and will finish promptly when I get back. I'll be uploading and scheduling content for that time, so it'll be like I never left! Not that anyone is chomping at the bit to get more. Well...not since that Sonic person who gave up when I stopped uploading Sonic videos. I'll have to get around to finishing these projects...

When I get back, Pyre will be high on the list of priorities. We will also be likely doing more D&D (provided things still go to plan) and Mesk expressed random interest to play Diablo 3. I might do that since I had a couple requests for it, but I haven't played that game in...I want to say 5 years. Whatever year it was released was the year I played it. Then I had all my gold stolen and I got bored.

While I'm away, I won't have much internet access, so I will be working on RPG assets, writing, reading, eating bread, drinking tea, sleeping, maybe playing through Thief 1, finishing Fire Emblem Conquest finally, starting Shadows of Valentia and trying not to get mauled by a black bear.

Msuh. Yes...Msuh.

Or "mush" rather.

So tired...was up late just staring at the ceiling wanting to sleep, but couldn't despite my measures to do so. Just staring, thinking about useless things.

Brain is mush. Abdomen hates me. Everything blowing up first thing in the morning cause people don't know how to click on a link. Ugh.

But yay soundtracks.

Reservoir Dogs - Heather suggested this to me last week so I wrote it down here for the sake of my memory and let it sit in drafts until today. Another soundtrack that uses Hooked on a Feeling? Oh dear this song will be stuck in my head forever. Oh no, it got worse. Not Coconut. Nooooooo.

No Man's Sky - Just searched "soundtrack" out of curiosity. Think this came up because of it's current relevance.

Abzu - Did the same thing for this as No Man's Sky. I think I got it for the same reason. It's very mystical sounding.

I'm going to be away for a week and a bit. Yearly trip to Lake Winnipeg. Got some family stuff going on so will be out there with them. Will have limited internet access, but I think the cell tower down there is actually good enough to hold better than an Edge signal. I think I had LTE last year. Anyway I'll try to finish up Murdered completely before I got and upload some stuff I can release every couple days down there.

Going to try and figure out some games as well. Either going to take Arkham Horror or Kill Shakespeare with me. I don't think I can fit both in a suitcase and still have room for a few books and clothes.

But yeah, if anyone needs me I'll be hiding out in a remote location begin tormented by the evil white stripe hunting spiders while I stuff my face with as many baked goods as I can afford. I apologize in advance to my stomach.

Wow, Much Lag

Very Slow. Such fail. Wow.

My browser and the internet at work is flipping out.

The park has been fairly quiet this week since the tire exploding incident. I still have no clue how they managed to drive the wrong way down a one-way street and burst their tire (and then proceed to drive on the flat tire despite the damage they were doing to their rims). That and the swing lady seems to be mixing up her schedule to be out there at midnight instead of 5am.

Grosse Pointe Blank - This is Kim's fault.

High Fidelity - This is Heather's fault.

Hey Mesk. Look. - Los Fabulosos Cadillacs - Matador (Official Video)

Video work is going slow, mostly because I'm lazy and also because I've been spending the majority of my time writing or watching people make fun of the American elections. I'll be away all weekend. I'll either be reading and trying not to get a sunburn, or being dragged behind a boat at unreasonable speeds if people can talk me into trying to drown myself again. The former would be good 'cause I'll finally get some reading done, however, the latter would be good practice for the Drumpf presidency scenario.

I'll be back Monday night. Ish.

Oh, also, I caught an Abra and hatched a Snorlax. Yey.

Less ded

I'm back from my trip and boy do I have a lot to do. I haven't really let my to do list sink in yet, so I'm doing the best thing I can do for my future self: pretend I don't have to do any of that and play Fire Emblem. I managed to finish Birthright while I was away and am now onto Conquest. Conquest is WAY more entertaining in terms of level clear conditions, design and difficulty. I'm quite pleased. I'm not sure why half the characters are trying to seduce me though...or getting way too much enjoyment shooting people with arrows. Actually I probably shouldn't read too much into that.

I'll be officially back to work tomorrow, but for the time being, I'm posting the rest of To The Moon since I didn't get around to doing that beforehand. I have no idea what the plan is for the next couple weeks other than knock to-dos off that list (including taxes...before I run out of time). I'll update more maybe on Thursday.

Cilantro

So this website exists: http://ihatecilantro.com/haikus/

Can't say I hate cilantro enough to write a haiku about it, but I'm not a fan of it in general.

This is the last soundtrack Thursday for the next couple of weeks since I'll be out of the city. Trying to get some things done over the next couple of days. I'll try to have some videos uploaded for you to watch while I'm gone, but I can't guarantee how much/what I'll be posting. I have a secret pool of videos, but most of it is faffing around in Age of Empires and Left 4 Dead.

I'll need to post the rest of what I have for Dead Space 2 and try to come up with a plan for finishing that. I ranted about this in another blog post so I don't really feel the need to bring it up again. I currently have all files from Shauna on my hard drives, which means my back log of co-op LPs have extended to SOMA and that Sherlock game (in addition to Murdered: Soul Suspect, Bioshock Infinite and Evil Within with Shauna, and Gauntlet and SR4 with Mesk/HKS). Dead Space 2 and Fire Emblem are pretty much the only solo LPs I have going on right now and I'm looking to change that. Well...when I get back.

The top games I want to run solo right now are:
Shadow of Mordor
To the Moon
Pillars of Eternity
(the rest of) Planet Alcatraz
Myst 4 (done the first 3...just need to prep them for release)
(the rest of) Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Skyrim: Dawnguard DLC
Grim Fandango

Essentially more than what I've had time/space for recording. Showed Oliver my hard drive reaction and his first thought was to get more hard drives and not to clean up the ones I already have XD. I'll just get myself in a bigger mess if I get more I think. That said, three of the drives I own are getting up there in age. Next year my oldest external will turn 10, so I should probably prep for the worst.

Undertale: Kristy really wants me to play this game. I will...eventually.

To the Moon: Heard this one is pretty short, so the LP for it will likely not take me too much time.

I would like to take a moment to say: Tableau, WHY DO YOU HATE JAPAN? Also would it kill you not to stretch my annotation for Guam across the ENTIRE MAP?

Okay now why are Argentina, Kenya and Uzbekistan showing up for North Asia, but not Japan? Okay this is really making me mad. There are active members in Japan. Why is it being excluded? Steve is going to be so confused next month.

Oh that's just great. The image generated for this slide is hosed. Wonderful. Also there's some wonky things going on with the data.

Pro tip everyone: don't let your research and data analyst go on mat leave before explaining how everything works.

ded

Since it's coming up fast, I figured I would announce that I will be MIA quite a bit over the next month (ish).

Now until March 17 - Very patchy video posting. Essentially I'll throw something up whenever I've had time to make it.

March 17-21 - Very limited contact. Will not be posting any video content.

March 27-April 11 - Will be out of the city. Very limited contact. Will be available by hangouts or email only. Will not be posting any video content (unless I managed to queue/schedule a lot of stuff, but don't expect anything).

Soundtrack Thursday will feature Fire Emblem soundtracks this week because I have a problem.

Fire Emblem Fates - Some of these tracks...all I'm imagining is the busywork between levels. Running around talking to everyone...people getting upset when I give them the wrong accessory (so I just keep passing around the same old dirty bath towel to see who reacts to it positively...I think Sakura cried), spending some REALLY awkward time in your private quarters (I think I found out where the petting part was removed...THEY STARE INTO YOUR SOUL) and trying to stockpile resources for unnecessary crafting. I think if Mesk plays any Fire Emblem games he should actually play this one...not because it's the best, but because it's the weirdest I've played so far. Anyhow, music is great for the most part...love the integration of the theme in some of the tracks.

Fire Emblem Awakening - Some of my favourite Fire Emblem tracks ever are in this game. I think out of the Fire Emblems released in the past 10 years, this is my favourite. Path of Radiance and the original Fire Emblem for Gameboy Advance I think are my two favourites though. I have a draft with my initial thoughts on Awakening lying around here somewhere that I never actually posted. Should see if I can find it...

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn - Out of all the Fire Emblem games (aside from Fates as I'm currently playing it), it's the only one I haven't finished. I got mad at the end because I accidentally enchanted some of the wrong weapons and I couldn't go back. I'll be returning to this game soon, hopefully to LP it once I'm done Path of Radiance.

I Pressed Publish Instead of Save

You know...it kind of weirds me out when people say I have a "sexy voice" on my videos. Not for the reason you think either. It weirds me out, because half of YouTube thinks I'm a pre-pubescent boy. That raises some very interesting questions for some of these random viewers.

I should start telling people I am a 12-year-old boy just to mess with them.

Summary of my week so far:
-Back to work, huge queue of projects to review, reminded that monthly reports need to be done
-All but one report breaks. One of them broke because SOMEONE couldn't get the support needed one day sooner (slacker).
-Spend thirty minutes trying to get the reports to work while working remotely with one of the only people who knows how these reports work (more or less).
-After not being able to get the reports to work, give up and work on the one that did run.
-Coffee
-Get mad at Argentina because it keeps resetting its filter to not show up.
-Lost Puerto Rico for 10-15 minutes.
-Got Puerto Rico back.
-Coffee
-Died in Gauntlet for about three hours.
-Filled up my hard drives again.
-Lamp works (yey)
-Too much coffee and couldn't sleep (actually was likely tea that did this).
-Keep falling asleep during the last 30 minutes of watching Mesk and HKS' Divinity LP. I'M ALMOST DONE WATCHING GUYS (on segment 27 now and yes, that perception thing was stupid).
-Nearly threw my radio out the window because the morning radio hosts for the channel I normally listen to in the morning make me want to puke rainbows every single day. Changed the channel in haste to some really chill folk music station. Currently searching for a new radio station that's interesting enough to wake me up but intelligent enough to keep me from waking up angry. Currently on some crappy modern pop channel, but at least the hosts don't make me want to kill myself...or them.
-Coffee
-Spend 5+ hours working with development to get reports working.
-Reports eventually work after a lot of dirty hacks.
-Coffee
-Receive an angry support ticket in French.
-Inventory still broken cause SOMEONE didn't mark down two days worth of inventory even though it takes literally 5 seconds to do. Literally.
-Found out that even my boss is scared of me yelling at him over inventory (I don't actually yell...I just leave passive aggressive and confused notes all over the spreadsheet).
-Vacuum is now projectile vomiting debris
-Another segment of Gauntlet edited. I hit 100 deaths on the counter.
-LANTERNS ACQUIRED
-Coffee
-Yay free breakfast
-Finally finished reports. If there are any mistakes I will actually cry.
-Called a hotel to book two rooms for later in the year after trying another number and getting no answer for three weeks. Learn that the phone number, the one listen on their site, has "limited hours" (i.e. no hours). Book two rooms. Get confirmation for one. Need to call again.
-Coffee etc.
-Find out another report needs to be run for next week (might actually cry).
-Spend an hour and a half driving to work because of bad roads (normally takes about 30 mins)

And now I'm here for soundtrack Thursday, drinking coffee again and putting off testing the final report. Because do not want.

Oblivion Soundtrack
Elder Scrolls Online
Diablo 2 - because who needs themes?

I'll be gone over the weekend and will not be available unless you happen to catch me checking my phone at the top of a mountain in -10C + windchill weather. Because that's only place that gets reception on that mountain and it's hard sharing a wifi connection that only allows two connections at a time. Unless all this has changed in the last year. Also going to look for a blanket I left behind...only I'm not sure what it's been through in the last year. I may not want it back. Not going to die first OR second in Werewolves this time.

...but if I do, it was Mel. Avenge me.

Speaking of falling face first...

EDIT 1: Went to run reports and discovered I had no idea what R File to use. Spend 30 mins trying to run the most recent ones to see if they work. Finally found the one I was supposed to use in the first place after a lot of hoop jumping. Still don't know if it will run. I get to wait two hours to find out unless it snaps in half.

EDIT 2: Kathleen wrote a book. She's trying to hire an editor. She is an awesome writer. You should go support her. She will be giving out cool stuff to people. Kathleen's GoFundMe.

EDIT 3: Shauna has a good number of videos up on her channel now. Like Dragon Age? You should go watch. Don't like Dragon Age? You should go watch. Shauna's Channel. Nick is also starting to do LPs. He is not ready yet. I will post a link when he is ready.

EDIT 4: Update on those reports 'cause I know you were all holding your breath on this one (that was sarcasm if you're like me and don't pick up on these things). I was running the wrong shit at first. I had to run back and cancel the report started and it exploded spectacularly. Once I got everything up and running I altered the .csv it was reading. Then I spent the next three hours futzing around with dates and formats. I figured out it was having issues with the way it was written (it's case sensitive), only I changed it in the wrong place when I was testing it. I was too stupid to pick up on this and assumed I was an idiot and had nothing to do with case sensitivity. I left frustrated last night and asked Oliver about it. He confirmed case sensitivity would mess with it. Came in today, changed it in the RIGHT place and it's currently running now. 10 minutes of work today and it's running. Ugh thank god this week is almost over.

Rock on.

Everything is on Fire

The sun is a lovely shade of blood red today. Time to ring in the apocalypse with some coffee, cookies and my return from the Place of Spiders (oh, and the Chicken Dance as is tradition with apocalypses). 

Yeah so my city is covered in smoke from the forest fires in Washington today. Heard it's pretty bad down there at the moment, so hope any readers living there are safe from the fires. I couldn't see downtown from the beltline today driving to work, so the air quality is pretty bad. I may add a picture later.

I am back home. I spent a lot of yesterday catching up on video work. I have a small segment of Saint's Row 3 left to go through, but I am essentially done that series. It's nice to have that 600GB back. I finished some work on Testament of Sherlock, but mostly it was just preparing clips for Mesk, who said he would do a in-depth analysis cast of the game for me. That should be fairly amusing. I also continued some work on Tera and the Dungeon Siege 1 Revival series (which I haven't continued since like...May or June). 

I need to finish recording Dead Space 2, Awesome Possum, Gauntlet (with Mesk, HKS and Wibod), Half Life Episode 2 and Riven (will get back to you on this). Guild Wars 1 and Tera need attention, but recording on those are on hold, I think until Mesk and HKS are done Divinity OS due to hard drive space limitations on their end. Not to say my end is any better what with my 600GB free on my flaky external hard drive. 

Oh yeah I still haven't finished Fire Emblem either...

I don't really have an upload schedule worked out yet as I'm still trying to figure out wtf I was doing before I left (nothing productive in the video world I'm guessing). So enjoy the random crap I throw at you for the next week. Hopefully by the weekend I'll have something resembling a regular upload schedule again.

PS - Yesterday I was talking with Mesk, HKS and Shauna and suddenly I'm the proud owner of SOMA and Planet Alcatraz, and apparently I'm LPing both. I'm not exactly sure what happened.

One More Thing

Forgot to post about it yesterday, but I figured I'd make a new one rather than add an edit. I will be leaving on Friday for a couple days, so I won't be around to for video uploads etc. I may queue some up and just post from my phone, but that all depends on how good reception is out in the boonies.

Life is Strange is fully uploaded. Don't watch part 6 unless you want to see me suffer at the hands of the phone password. The rest is pretty intense though, so be prepared.

I will queue up some Contrast, Dead Space 2 and maybe (if I get it done between editing papers and making ski videos) more of those Sherlock videos. I may have some other videos hidden in the depths that I can throw up in the meantime. I'll have to take a peek.

When I get back, I'll be working through the never-ending back log of video. Awesome Possum may start going up early even though I'm not done it. I'm stuck. In the arctic. With robot dogs. And tears. I supplied the latter.

Halfway Mark

Still on holidays. It is glorious. I have been super lazy with updating video descriptions and tags a) because it is a pain in the ass on my phone, and b) because it is a pain in the ass on my phone. I will be returning at the end of next weekend, but I will be occupied for a couple days dealing with everything I missed, figuring out if I actually have a full time job or not, and ensuring I have enough room on my hard drive to begin recording UT3.

Meanwhile in the boonies it has...rained. And rained some more. Got a little bit of wind, and then a lot of wind, and then I think the sun appeared for about five seconds. So I am stuck in a cabin with four other people unless I would like to venture out and get cold and wet. I am tempted to go swimming in the waves, but last year when I did that in this weather I nearly got hypothermia. It's all good.

So I have been attempting to write and read through a friend's script/writing for an upcoming project of his. It has been slow in both counts, and I feel bad because one of the reasons for coming out here was just to read and write. Reception has been poor, but I have a window of internet usage here that I am taking full advantage of.

I still have four videos to give you before I am back. Thank you for your patience.

PS - Keep an eye out for Guild Wars 2 videos upon my return.

PSS - Never leave tea leaves sitting in your teapot for two days. Especially when that tea has chocolate in it. I cleaned it out and now my hand smells like curdled milk.

Gone on Vacation

As of tomorrow I will be gone on vacation. I will be back the first week of September. While I am gone, I will post videos from my phone on a semi-regular basis. 

You should see:

The rest of Penumbra Black Plague

Skyrim

Neverwinter Dungeons

Resident Evil 5 (posted by GameVoyeur on his channel)

Dishonored: Brigmore Witches (at lest the first few episodes)

And anything else I find that might interest you.

I don't know what internet or phone reception will be like, so if you message me and I don't reply, I'm not ignoring you on purpose. 

See you all September 2. 

The Next Few Weeks

Hey all, I won't be available to play any games for the next few weeks. I will be leaving on Monday for two weeks and in the time I have left at home I have two work shifts, a wedding, a friend visiting from out of town, a ton of last minute encoding and uploading, packing, cleaning, and running assorted errands. I will not have time to play games. I am sorry. In addition, it is extremely hot in this room (35+ degrees Celsius). I am Canadian and I live in a dry place where it rarely gets above 25 degrees for long periods of time. We have had a bit of a heat wave this summer. It is slowly killing me. I do not have air conditioning...just a little fan that blows hot air around. This means I will be getting very little sleep, but I still will be trying because I have been losing sleep because of a back injury. So all in all I will be a busy, tired and agonized individual for the next 5 days, and will be declining any offers to play games. Please do not take offense to this. Or do. I just won't care because I'm grouchy and I gave you fair warning. Now just imagine me grinning stupidly here.

I will however, provide you with videos this week and while I am gone. I may reduce uploads to once every two days so I do not run out of material or in case I miss a day because my internet/phone connection where I am going will be...patchy. This also means you probably won't be able to contact me easy, so again, I'm not ignoring you...I'm just out of touch. I will return August 31 and be available again for games a few days after (I have plans so far for September 1).

This has been a heat-induced public announcement.

PS - Capture Card arrived in the mail.

Travel

As of Thursday, I will be gone for a month and a half. I'm trying to get a lot of videos uploaded before then, but I won't have Dungeon Siege 3 fully recorded, encoded and uploaded before I go unfortunately. I won't be taking my laptop or external drives with me as they are too heavy and I don't want to risk them getting broken, lost or stolen (I can't really afford to let that happen). And so, I will try and post some updates here and perhaps have some videos prepared for when I return at the beginning of August.

I am done school, graduated and ready to work full time for the rest of my life. Good news is, I will probably have MORE time to record with no homework or papers to worry about. I'm actually going to miss school though. I'm a nerd.

So, I will be around for a few more days. After that, if you never hear from me again, I probably fell victim to one of the following:

-kidnapped by trolls
-got hopelessly lost and starved to death
-got eaten by a bear or a giant rabid moose or a grue
-got assaulted by a killer rabbit or beaver or a combination of the two
-executed my leap of faith incorrectly and missed the haystack
-got hit by a runaway scooter
-sacrificed myself to disarm a bomb that would have been sent to the earth's core in a desperate attempt to destroy the world
-choked on a crepe
-went crazy after being bitten by a cave spider
-got run over by a street cleaner
-got slapped in the face with a cod
-got trapped in an invisible box by mimes
-engaged in an epic battle with one of my many doppelgangers, eventually destroying us both
-encountered a giant robot minotaur in a labyrinth where I became lost after being kidnapped and taken there by trolls

Or something along those lines.