Theme Song

The sentiment of the last three weeks.

I literally had no time for a Soundtrack Thursday and I'm going to be moving around way too much today to seriously listen to anything. What's been going on these past weeks? I have no idea. I think my brain has entered stasis to try and preserve whatever sanity remains. 

It started with returning from vacation and having a massive panic attack in the middle of the night the week later which led to me oversleeping two days in a row (and made me inexcusably late to work). I've then been terrified of being late for the past 2-3 weeks, which added to the building stress levels. Since then we've had about 5-6 people quit (for various reasons), which wasn't the worst because they're all going on to new and exciting things, but one person in particular was one of my favourite people at my job. 

So as a result there was a massive information dump on me to prep for taking over the role temporarily until a new hire started. Now I have half that role, but I've been gradually taking on more and more to the point where my week is fairly full at work. There was a large event for one of our communities this past week which has required about a third of my monthly allocated hours for that community. Meanwhile almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for another program.

Last week was the pinnacle of things going horribly wrong, but was probably the least stressed out of the last three weeks because I think I reached peak level stress for that time period. That said, I've suffered 4 major panic attacks in the past 3 weeks (one while I was driving which was fun), mostly health anxiety related as my intestine goes through cycles of discomfort and pain (I've just started to assume my intestine is trying to collapse on itself and create a singularity). It feels actually pretty normal-ish today, after a major issue this week which I had to stay home for.

I'm hoping it's something relatively benign and stress-related (please don't be celiac, please don't be celiac, please don't be celiac oh god I love gluteny foods way too much), because at least that can be fixed. I saw a doctor last week, got a bunch of tests done and heard nothing back, which is good because it means I'm not dying as far as they know. I have a follow-up next week, so maybe, finally, after all these years, I may have some decent answers of what's going on. 

Going back through the blogs, the number of times I've said I'm tired or sick, is a disgustingly high number. The worst part of everything these past few weeks has been the panic attacks. They are exceptionally uncomfortable and frightening despite my knowledge of what they are. When they start, they are REALLY hard to stop, and I often just have to wait for them to finish. It's not something fun to talk about, and people tend to have a negative view of things like depression and anxiety, which is unfortunate cause it would be good to have more support for mental health issues in this country. I talk about it occasionally, because it's nice to get my concerns down in writing, it lets other people know they aren't the only ones experiencing it, and because it scares me.

Despite various issues, I'm considering this period of time as a personal crucible. If I can make it through rough spots and be better at what I do, better at managing my health and better at coping with stress, then I consider it a valuable experience. I'll just have to wait and see how this all turns out.

From what I can tell, I'm almost done Shadow of Mordor. The majority of it has actually been recorded in the last couple of weeks. I anticipate the series being about 30-40 segments long (each about 30 minutes each). I tried getting some of the bonus stuff, but it didn't really yield anything interesting other than some supplementary story items, which is cool in it's own right. I have a bunch of the stealth missions outstanding because they suck and I suck and everything sucks about the stealth missions. I may just finish  the main mission and call this LP complete as I have most of the upgrades and I'd like to start a new LP project.

I really want to get Evil Within off my hard drives. If I have time with all the Turkey Day shenanigans this weekend, I will do so in addition to finishing Shadow of Mordor.

There is a lot of snow coming down outside. It's been a blizzard for the last like...hour. 

I feel like I'm getting to the point where I can do a demo video of the first area in my crummy RPG. I need to add a little more...life to it, configure some more battle options, finish the triggers for three of the Interns and finish the "boss" area. I have placeholders for a lot of things in it right now, but that can all be easily updated later. 

Writing wise, I have consolidated my working document and uploaded it all to Google drive so I can take it back to the old laptop and begin building all the random shit I have written out into a narrative that makes sense. IT MAKES SENSE IN MY HEAD OKAY? But yeah, no progress made on the reader version because I just haven't been motivated to tackle that mess.

Update on Kathleen's fundraising: She's off to a good start, but she needs more supporters. There are three free, signed copies of her book available to be won in addition to a copy of her favourite book. Check out her page! I'll be posting a video about it soonish as we're about a month out.

Speaking of which, I have decided to purchase a capture card. I will need to do this soon to have it ready for Extra Life in November. This will also allow Shauna and I to play LPs from the PS3/PS4 (as well as some other consoles). We're planning to do Outlast 2 next year this way. 

And yes, I am aware the demo for Outlast 2 is out. Shauna and I are not playing it in case it will be official gameplay from the finished product. If it turns out to be different, we'll play it retroactively. 

Here have a dongle.

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.

Extra Life 2014

I told Kathleen I'd make an announcement here and on my YouTube channel as well. Both Kathleen and I will be participating in Extra Life this year. I am promoting Kathleen's fundraising initiative, because I figure she has more connections willing to donate. The money would be going to the Alberta Children's hospital. Kathleen is trying to raise over $1000 dollars this year. So far she has just over $400 dollars.

I will be playing games for 24 hours as well, whether that will be at Kathleen's house or not, I am unsure. Regardless, I plan to stream off and on all day, so I will take suggestions on what to play. I can do Gamecube games as well thanks to my capture card.

Kathleen's Blog

Kathleen's Donation Page

I will add links to Kathleen and my Twitch accounts closer to the date (October 25th).

Extra Life Fundraising

So, this weekend I will be participating in the Extra Life charity event and will be playing video games for 25 hours straight. I will be joining my friend Kathleen at her home, who has been raising money since the summer for the event. Her and a couple of her buddies and I will be playing all sorts of games, taking requests and streaming through xsplit in Twitch. If you would like to tune in to the livestream, I will be posting a link when Kathleen has it set up, probably by the end of today. If you would like to donate, she is super close to reaching her goal of $500 dollars and can be given at this site:

Kathleen's Extra Life Fundraising Page

I will be playing games and you'll probably catch me playing in the livestream. I will also record some, hopefully getting some good footage for videos. Thanks all, I'll keep this page posted with updates!