juliebarkley
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Posts posted by juliebarkley
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: More walking, but no more "organized" exercise.
Prayer: I did not today.
NerdFitness: Only a very small amount.
Purging: A copy of Windows 95. Not entirely sure why I have this, but I really can't see myself using it in future. Not too many games I might want to emulate would only run on '95.
New Shiny:
Angband:
Well.
The dives just didn't get better. I looked at my stash and saw that the undead I had been meleeing had drained the charges of my staves and wands, and I was very concerned. I had some healing resources, but almost no teleportation left, only one charge of teleport other, and no charges of stun monster at all. I was slightly relieved when I found a new staff that boosted my teleportation charges, but things were still very dicey and I was rapidly using them up too. Jinjin's fate was sealed on level 72. He was trapped between three teleportation location: one inhabited by Glaurung Father of Dragons, one with two ringwraiths, and one with a bunch of demons and an archlich. In order to try to deal with the archlich, I dropped everything that still had charges. I can't remember if I was badly wounded enough that I had to try it, or if I just forgot, but I phase doored away without picking up my staves again, and as this was fairly close to Glaurung, the phases kept bringing me to bad locations for fighting, and never close enough to get back to my staves. I ran out of healing, trapped in a tunnel and trying to fight around the corner that would get me out of the breathing range of some things, watching my HP drop and drop, and then the inevitable happened: something breathed, and I died. RIP Jinjin.
I realized (after I died) that I believe I did have a Teleport Level scroll that would have saved me, but I think it would only have extended the inevitable, given that I had used up all of my healing and most of my other resources.Given that there are still two weeks of the challenge left, I think I'll start up a new person tomorrow. And given that it is October, I think I will try the Necromancer class for the first time ever. I do not expect to make it as far in the dungeon with a new class to learn, but who knows?
BGA: I have started to win in Koi-Koi.
Work: Start of day: 632. End of day: 629. Could have been more; I think I may have not deleted a couple. One of my tasks took more than three hours, and I decided to finish the whole thing in one sitting (they are only mostly short tasks!), so I feel I did pretty well even though the number decrease is small.
Long-term: I put out orders to sell all of the positions that do not fit my investment plan, and put out a purchase order for something I had enough cash available to pick up. Tomorrow we will see how many of those orders have been filled.
Today I went out to take pictures. I realized that I have basically no pictures of myself that I would be comfortable sharing (I don't like taking pictures and I don't feel like I usually look good in them), so my son offered to take some for me. He got me to go out to the park and on a local path and like, pose with the nature. It felt weird, but I have a few nice ones now. I even got one on the front steps with one of my cats
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On 10/1/2023 at 3:09 AM, Scaly Freak said:
Um... I'm maybe assuming too much about how closely the game sticks to the original lore here, but it might not be a good idea to wear this particular ring. Just a thought.
I have never found it myself, but I've heard that it gives quite good advantages, at the expense of a slight experience drain and never being able to take it off again. But you also tend to find it very near the end, so that's not hugely off-putting. A noble sacrifice for the greater good of the world.
On 10/1/2023 at 3:09 AM, Scaly Freak said:My new workplace has a division in Canada and therefor a lot of employees there, so there was talk about this in the #diversity channel in work Slack all day yesterday. Links to articles about what the day is about were posted, and there was a thread dedicated to selfies of orange shirts. It caught me by surprise, in a good way, so I clicked the links and educated myself and it was quite fascinating.
Indeed. It is a fascinating (if disturbing) bit of history. Some of the survivor stories are absolutely gutwrenching.
I don't know very much about it, but I know that there were similar schools in the US (I think we copied the model for the Industrial boarding schools from existing American ones). The situations in the two countries were obviously not identical, but they both were aiming to assimilate children, so you probably got some of the same damaging consequences of language and culture loss. Maybe some of the generational trauma from widespread physical and sexual abuse as well, though that would depend greatly on how well your school system was run and how many children passed through it.
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I did a fair amount of walking while out running errands today, and also did a session of Elements on returning.
Prayer: I did not today.
NerdFitness: I have read a little bit.
Purging: Today I really did not feel like it, so I did not.
New Shiny:
Angband:
Today's diving was once again fairly stressful and involved a lot of running away. I haven't found any scrolls of recharging in a while and the shops have been out, so I am down to only two Teleport Other casts, and this is making me nervous as scarier things appear. My two trips into the dungeon both ended in returning to town at or before fully exploring the level (once because I had a bunch of stuff, and once because the path between me and the nearest stairs was too risky). So I am at the same level as last time, with little progress to report. I did have my first sighting of a ringwraith, The Witch-King of Angmar, but I ran away because while I could maybe handle him on his own, he can summon other ringwraiths (as well as greater demons, greater undead, and ancient dragons), and that is very much too much for me.
Notable kills: Baphomet the Minotaur Lord, Nan the Giant.
BGA: I learned to play Koi-Koi, and it is a ton of fun. I've been trying to remember which suits have which stuff, now that I know what all the yaku are.
Work: Start of day: 632. End of day: 632. Added a thing or two, did a couple of things, but really didn't do much today.
Long-term: I tried, but I quickly realized that in order to buy things, I need to free up the money by selling a bunch of small positions in things from before, it being a bad idea to put out purchase orders without the cash to cover them and all, and that is not possible on a Sunday. So I just wrote up exactly what I need to buy, and in what amounts, for easy reference for tomorrow.
There was a craft fair in town, so I wandered up with my mother to have a look around. I ended up buying no crafts, but did get cotton candy and chocolate.
Plus more chocolate and some candy at the grocery store later, so my chocolate snack stash at least has been replenished. (Which is fine; it has been completely empty for about a week now.)
I also picked up some daikon at the market. I have been reading Barakamon, and found a recipe for pickled daikon that looks really easy. I've never done a recipe from a manga before, so this will be a fun experiment. The lady I got the daikon from at the farmer's market said to tell her how it went (she also sells pickles and had made some Vietnamese pickled vegetables a few days prior), so I may bring her a little bit to try if it turns out well.
Other than that, I've spent most of the day reading, some of which was spent on A National Crime. This is going to be a long read; there are a lot of words per page, it's heavy enough in terms of stats and new information that you can't just breeze through, and the information itself is heavy. So I'm doing a chapter at a time, with breaks for lighter things.
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1 hour ago, Scaly Freak said:
The Mellow Sidekick was behaving in an uncharacteristically anti-social and non-mellow way, while also displaying a slowly worsening lethargy and refusing to put weight on one of this front legs, so late in the afternoon we took him in to an emergency vet. Long story short, the tender front leg was injured and developing an infection, and will be treated with antibiotics and pain killers. The Cone of Shame has been deployed, and a full recovery is expected.
Aw, poor little guy. Hopefully the Feisty Sidekick will leave him in peace while he heals.
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On 9/28/2023 at 10:34 AM, Cheetah said:
No news here. No walking, no exercise. Feeling hopeless. Just about exercise, not about life in general. I do have a sort of vague anxiety about my physical fitness slipping away from me, but otherwise life is pretty good. Hectic and stressful, but okay. But fitness is pretty hopeless.
I don't know how many of the running-around things are family-related, but if they are, redirecting one to something you can do WITH the family could be one way to "multi-task". Thinking of how much you enjoyed the hike, which is both fitness and family time rolled into one.
If the need is for alone time, that won't help though.
It really does sound like you have too much on your plate, for which the only solution might be to cut back, at least for a while. On walking time, or on other things.
Talk to the family. Maybe they feel overwhelmed too, and you could all let go of something. Or maybe they could take some things off your shoulders. At the very least, they should know how you are feeling right now, because they love you.
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1 hour ago, Harriet said:
Thank you, that's very kind! How long is yours and how long do you want it cut back to?
Mine's about waist-length, and I'll be cutting it to somewhere between bra-strap length-ish. Perhaps a touch shorter just so that it lasts longer.
Have you decided what to do with yours yet, lengthwise?
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I will go out for a walk tonight. And hopefully I will not have to watch a coyote eating someone's cat, like my son did a couple of nights ago.
Prayer: I did! This having-the-mat-out-and-actually-paying-attention thing is actually working!
NerdFitness: I am trying really hard to catch up and have things to say. I would really like to support both my existing friends and future friends-to-be.
Purging: A Stars Wars N64 game. I'm not sure why I have ended up with so many flight sim games when I have never enjoyed flight sims ever.
New Shiny:
Angband:
There was more diving, and he is about to drop to dungeon level 72 unless I head back to town first. These levels are getting risky to teleport around in; so many things that summon greater demons/undead (who can then summon MORE greater demons/undead) or ancient dragons. And my dude, he is not the stealthy type who can tiptoe past these things without waking them.
So, today's dungeon diving was a little-hair-raising at times, but I was equipped, so he's still alive and doing okay. There was nothing super noteworthy about today's dive to highlight.
But.
I think I have only once ever been lower in the dungeon than this. I am starting to run into enemies that I have never seen before. That is always a Very Dangerous Thing, because although I do have a Rod of Probing (don't laugh), it's still a sacrifice of a turn to use it against something that could potentially kill you, on a run that is going very well.
We are definitely in the late game. At this point, there is enough dangerous stuff out there that the smack-everything strategy is in the distant past. The goal is to get enough gear and items to fight Morgoth and win. Not to clear levels. And certainly not to play fair. The game does not play fair. Find vaults, nerf them as best you can with Banishing and teleporting things away, sort through the pickings. Pick off uniques when it is reasonably safe to do so so that Morgoth won't summon them later. Survive. Repeat.
I still lack an artifact cloak, and am still using a ring of resist poison because I have found exactly ONE piece of armour that had poison resist (and it is NOT one you can do without). (Probably good that Jinjin isn't a wizard like the last bunch, because I don't think I've seen a single wizard spellbook this whole time.) I know there are some awesome rings and such still out there (including The One Ring).
This is now nervous time. The death odds go up with every level. I have to prepare for the end boss. But I've never seen the end boss, so I don't know exactly how to do that. (Plus there's a mandatory pre-boss boss too.) I've read a single playthrough of someone else's strategy, so I'm stocking up as they did. And I guess, we shall see if I make it that far.
Notable kills: Tevildo Prince of Cats (appeared twice in three levels. Seriously, GO AWAY), Harowen the Black Hand.
BGA: Thought about it and then didn't. I think I need to make a list of what's there or something. There is so much to choose from (and yet no easy-to-find A-Z list) that I get overwhelmed trying to choose.
Work: Start of day: 637. End of day: 632. I must have added things I can't remember adding, because I did a lot of items today. And despite the picture books now making up 10% of the list, they haven't popped up once yet.
Long-term: No. This might be a good thing to do when I get back from my hopefully coyote-free walk though.
Today was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, so my workplace was closed today. I didn't really do anything for the day - though it is really more of a Remembrance Day vibe than a "holiday" one - but I do have a couple of books out about indigenous history that look interesting (Clearing the Plains and A National Crime). I may dig into one of those this weekend in honour of the day.-
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On 9/28/2023 at 2:13 AM, Harriet said:
Done. I was indecisive but this one will do. They're very close by, too.
I'm looking for a hairdresser to cut my long hair shorter after a long time of no haircuts too. If you need moral support/solidarity.
I hope yours goes amazingly well!
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Hope your Pathfinder session (and Wednesday) went well, and that you're getting a good rest after the Tough Mudder!
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4 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:
Different world here
Over here 5 million is so small the place is called a village. Not even a small town. Not like Beijing where we have a few housing complexes that have more than 1 million each. Even so, being here in Chongqing makes Beijing seem like a provincial backwater.
The urban-rural divide must be be HUGE in China then, not just in terms of economic status but also in culture and perspective. Literally half the country must have trouble imagining how the other half lives.
*moves Invisible China up my reading pile*
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: Not today. But I'm still feeling the Literal Immortality DOMS. Ouch.
Prayer: Ummm......
NerdFitness: Yes, did read a little!
Purging: A few recipe cards.
New Shiny:
Angband:
Jinjin did a lot of diving, had many adventures, and had much nether breathed at him. He cleared out a pit of giants with a single scroll of Mass Banishment, and a huge demon pit with a scroll of Banish which handily appeared after killing the very first one. He cursed as a step onto lava destroyed is staff of *Destruction*. He danced many a dance of careful luring followed by painful smiting. He is still alive, and has made it to dungeon level 69, and character level 46 (maxes out at 50). He somehow has a better stock of healing items than when he began this dive.
Here is his most interesting adventure of the last couple of days.
Jinjin stumbled across another Omens of Death floor, which, as we have already learned, almost always means a vault with nasty enemies and (hopefully) good items. And so it was on this level. He is now exploring with Potions of Enlightenment when he has them, so he saw this coming for the entire level and was able to clear everything else first before checking it out. From a distance, it looked like this:
Some armour and weapons in there that could be good. (Unlike potions and scrolls, weapons and armour do not fully ID unless you walk on them. The reason being that if they are artifacts, they will only appear once, but only after they are IDed. So if an artifact was created in an impossible vault and you missed it, it can reappear since you didn't ID it.) Okay now, what's in there? Walk a little closer and see...
Purple on the enemy list means unique, red means out-of-depth. They are sorted with the highest levels on top. Pazuzu is not doable, but he could be teleported away. All those ancient dragons can be dealt with with the convenient Banish scroll he had just picked up. (Ping!) And now, you know, it doesn't actually look so bad. The spiral layout here is a big help; by carefully waiting at corners, you can control how many things can come at you at once, and any teleport within a vault takes you all the way outside, but the monsters have to go the long way while you go straight to the entrance.
And so it went. Fundin went down pretty easily. Gilim was harder, but seemed unwilling to use his ranged attacks, so I kept an enemy between him and me and emptied a staff of Dispel Evil that I found somewhere. That took a good chunk off his health, and my sword did the rest. I tried the Mouth of Sauron, but he was too tricky, so he was also teleported away. Jinjin got all the way to the room in the middle and was picking off the last few enemies so that he could check out the loot in safety. Then a nexus vortex appeared. I'm not sure if I just didn't notice it, or if the Maia of Ulmo summoned it. But it breathed nexus (scrambles your stats and/or teleports you) at Jinjin, he failed his save (he has no resistance), and it teleported him OFF THE LEVEL. Before he could pick up any of the loot. Let us cry a little tear for hard-earned prizes lost. 😢
Notable kills: Ariel Queen of Air (I think that was today), Quaker Master of Earth, The Balrog of Moria, Fundin Bluecloak, Gilim the Giant of Eruman, Smaug the Golden, Thuringwithil the Vampire Messenger (summoned by someone much weaker; that was a shock!), Tselakus the Dreadlord.
BGA: Site was down when I checked on it.
Work: Start of day: 604. End of day: 637. Another large pile of picture books came home with me today. There are still a good 30-40 at work, so this number is going to get worse before it gets better.
Long-term: Nope.
The corner of my bedroom is starting to look like I am starting up my own library.
At least it's all neatly stacked.
The scarf I've been paid to knit has been looking at me pleadingly for the last few days, so I'm going to cuddle up with it, put on Tale of the Manticore, and get it a little closer to complete. Night!
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I will do a proper update tomorrow. Have been feeling rather dizzy and headachey and a bit out of it all day. Not sure if it a combination of allergies, hormones, and not eating enough for a couple of days, or if I really am coming down with something. I guess I'll know after a bit of sleep. Night.
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On 9/27/2023 at 12:05 AM, Scaly Freak said:
And it was done
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Exercise: I was tired on getting home from work, but I still made sure to at least stretch. And also went for a walk. I am achy all over; Literal Immortality made me WORK. I feel so unfit.
Prayer: I had one opportunity and I squandered it with no good excuse.
NerdFitness: I have had trouble settling in to read anything. Not sure if it's the tiredness being distracting, or just wandering mind. So did read a little, but couldn't get into it.
Purging: Shall do now. Okay, I'm back. After getting a few CDs I feel I need to at least listen to, I found one that I swear I have never seen before, and have heard of nothing on it. Easy. Gone.
New Shiny:
Angband:
No diving today. Tiredness also kills. But I did have a look at his equipment because he found a few neat things last dive. Turns out by replacing the Amulet of Resistance with the new Jewel Evenstar, Jinjin has resistance to everything resistable except nexus (and blindness). High-level resists are not super reliable and don't always reduce damage by much, but everything helps. And this should help with the constant experience drain he's been suffering too, because the Jewel has both nether resistance and hold life. (High resists block a variable amount of damage from their element, but also the other effects of those elements, like blindness, experience drain, hallucinations, etc.) Every resist is found on just a single item though, so if I want to be able to swap any gear at all (and I will) this situation may not be permanent.
And my house was full so I had to throw away some old things to store the new ones. So I played the housecleaning and purging game even in video games.
Notable kills: None.
BGA: Nope.
Work: Start of day: 557. End of day: 604. I have brought home a pile of picture books, and then added "top book of picture book pile" to the list once for each book. This will blow up the length of the list, but many of the tasks on there are similarly short, and because these have a due date, this should get them done a bit faster just because they'll pop up more often. More coming in the next week or so.
Long-term: Nope.
Work was so much better today. I had people at my programs. I got actual concrete steps done to making my future programs happen. And I got to eat outdoors in the lovely warm sunshine when there are relatively few lovely warm sunshiney days left. Then hung out with some friends online and watched some stuff together. I may have had a cloud of tiredness all day, but otherwise, it was a really nice day.
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3 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:
I bet he would stepped in front of your monitor and trampled all over the keyboard too if you hadn't teleported him! What a strangely realistic enemy....
Or tried to sit on my arm while I type, or nuzzle the corner of the screen, changing its angle and risking pushing the whole laptop onto the floor. One of those things. He's creative. Just like a real cat.
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Early report for me.
I both had a lot of energy at work and was also extremely annoyed by the end of my shift. Tech was being difficult; I was opening a lot of tabs in web.archive.org, and the automatic internet filter must have thought I was abusing the system and blocked it for me and only me, forcing me to use generic workstations and awkward workarounds to finish the job I was doing (the way the system is set up also does not allow us to access our personal work OneDrive on generic workstations). Then I found out that a bunch of processing work had been left for me despite another coworker being in the position for an hour and my having noticed them having a nearly half hour chat with a customer - not helping with reader's advisory or tech help, but just chatting. (Said processing work was once primarily my work in my old position, but that position no longer exists, so now it is everyone's work. But habits are hard to change and it is sometimes still getting left for me.) Then the same coworker made a comment that I must have nothing to do when I finished up that processing, then backpedalled faster than I have ever seen anyone do before when they saw how fast my eyebrows went up. Because I am in the hair-on-fire-trying-to-prep-everything stage of the job. And also because this isn't the first time I've heard condescending comments from this staff member, or other people, about children's staff, and I was already not in a good mood. (Having worked both adult and children's library positions, I assure you that the children's staff have a heavier workload, lower budget, and get way less respect despite equal or greater required skill than the people working adult-oriented positions. Imagine a childless person smugly telling a new, bewildered, sleep-deprived first-time mother how it must be like a little vacation getting to stay home and watch TV all day with your child, and how much the mother would want to punch that person in the face, and you have some idea how I felt in that moment.)
Anyway. Rant over. Point is, I had some aggression to work out when I got home, so I picked the Literal Immortality program on GMB because has more cardio in it. And holy crap, the combination of plyometric pushups and bouncing split squats was good for working out that loose energy. Oof, I'm going to be sore later. I could barely walk by the end.
I may settle in to do some challenge reading, but that's the only other challenge-related thing I'm doing today. (Okay, might try to learn a new game.) Because I also made the hard decision to bring home the pile of picture books that I need to go through for work. It's getting more and more clear that I'm just not going to have time to check them at work at the moment (though I absolutely SHOULD have time). The pile now has over 100 items and it's literally not stable, so I'm bringing it home in bits and pieces and adding it all to my task list. (They are easier to work on in short bursts anyway, for me at least.) So that list is about to explode in size and I'm kind of pissed about that too, because I do not want bringing work home to be a regular or expected part of my job. So I am not working on that today. Or playing Angband, because pissiness leads to inattention leads to death. Reading and board games and language practice - this is the way for tonight.
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4 hours ago, deftona said:
I think I just friended you
You did. It is done. Prepare to be cheered.
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10 hours ago, deftona said:
WHO ISN'T
Well, find me and friend me, or PM me your Duo username, and I will happily join your cheering squad!
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I finished shaking the dust out of my soft furnishings! There was SO MUCH. I have got to get myself a proper rug beater, because this amount of dust can't possibly be healthy, vacuuming can't get it all, and besides stirs up lots of dust in the process. And is noisy. In the meantime, we used a rowing oar today.
Prayer: Yes, once!
NerdFitness: Did a fair bit of reading.
Purging: Just a bookmark. But I did learn how to play a CD minidisc.
New Shiny:
Angband:
Most of today's diving was rather boring, until I got to another Omens of Death level. I tried to map the area, and got this:
What the heck is going on here?! The failed zapping and monsters burning went on for a while (because Jinjin is not the most brilliant mind and using items requires some thinking apparently). When I finally did get a map, I could still see no reason for all the death, and nothing pinged my ESP, which was all more than a little unnerving. But hey. We're here to explore. Let's explore.
The good stuff all seemed concentrated in the bottom left corner of the level, not in vaults, but still with a lot of nastiness around them. Yet all looked doable. The only unique was Tevildo Prince of Cats, and last time I met him he was easy. (The was actually one other, Baphomet the Minotaur Lord, but I only ran into him near the end and realized very quickly that I couldn't take him, but could outrun him.) The only other thing that seemed worth worrying about was a Great Swamp Wyrm, but Ancient Dragons were already getting to be fairly easy, so with a bit of care, it should be okay.
Oh, and in the same corner, I found the source of the early-level monster barbecue, though I couldn't yet see what was in there:
(Tevildo is that purple f, by the way.)
This level turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated. Tevildo was quite robust; last time I think I killed him with magic and never got near him in melee due to his summoned cat herd. But he is a beast if you get withing scratching distance. Constantly blinding me (one thing I have no resistance to). So did a few other enemies in the area. And confusing, if I forgot to swap out my ESP helmet once I found him. I would teleport away and come back, only to be quickly worn down again. And he can heal.
Even with a speed boost, I was making only slow progress. I got him to half health before giving up, having already wasted way too many healing potions on him. So I teleported him away, planning to steal any good loot and then peace out.
But he kept coming back. Just like the cat in the song. JUST LIKE A REAL CAT.I swear I sent him away three times at least, as well as teleporting away, and he just. Kept. Showing. Up. So annoying.
I never did find out what was in that lava pit (other than a bunch of demons). There were a bunch of items on the island in the middle, and heck, maybe more too, but I saw the name Osyluth in my enemy list (and Tevildo coming up behind me), looked at my HP and inventory, and abandoned it as a bad risk. Teleported away, zapped my rod of recall and started to walk until it activated. Spent the last of it running from Tevildo again. Stupid cat.
Jinjin himself is doing great. Level 39, max depth reached is now 63, maxed out character stats (and fully maxed STR and CON at the moment). And remember how happy I was to find a Ring of Speed last time, so bring him from a sad +4 to a less-likely-to-die +9? Well, the game was so very stingy with speed items for so very long, and now it's throwing them all at me at once. He's running at +17 right now, and even has some speed-granting items to spare. That's basically endgame-level speed. Might be time for another equipment rejig.
Notable kills: The Phoenix, Shelob Spider of Darkness.
BGA: Nope.
Work: Start of day: 562. End of day: 557. Might do more.
Long-term: All of my ETF options, whether Canadian or American-listed, are now selected. All I have to do is finish the buying process, and I can call this a good investment in my future!
I feel like I had something to write in this space five minutes ago, but it is now completely gone. So completely unlike Tevildo. Also annoying.-
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11 hours ago, deftona said:
Duolingo. Jumping on the insistent owl train.
Are you looking to build a small army of followers to cheer you on?
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What kind of martial arts are you doing? Super curious how online school works out for you!
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I took some stuffed animals outside to beat the dust out of them. Then the pillows. That was fun and easy, so I decided to keep going. Why not do all the soft furnishings, I thought? I grabbed a comforter and a quilt and took them out. HOLY CRAP the dust that came out of them! I think I could probably have gotten more, but those things are heavy, and shaking them vigorously left me very tired. Definitely exercise. I will have to finish the rest (including a moving blanket that weighs almost ten pounds!) tomorrow.
Prayer: There were no sound alarms, but the banner is working. I am annoyed that technology is screwing with my good intentions.
NerdFitness: Just reading today.
Purging: Found an iPod in today's box. Early gen. I think I literally never used it, and I don't think there's much point in working this old tech into my systems when the software to support it was never fun to use anyway.
New Shiny:
Angband:
I made minimal subs to my armour, but there's definitely some stuff worth hanging on to for later.
Bought up all of my replacement gear and made a good first run where I picked off some uniques (and then teleported off a level accidentally by reading the wrong thing 🤦♀️). Dumped my Phase Door scrolls and only realized I forgot to buy them back again when I was already back in the dungeon. This resulted in a hair-raising situation where I was teleporting between The Phoenix and an assortment of other breathers and a lesser titan. Teleport tends to bring you to roughly the same regions, and because the dungeon level was a bit small, it was mostly shuffling me between these two. I had to ditch with The Phoenix almost dead.
My fault though.
Finally found a Ring of Speed.
This makes things so much more comfortable!
Notable kills: Rogrog the Black Troll, Vargo Tyrant of Fire, Itangast the Fire Drake, Scatha the Worm, Ar-Pharazôn the Golden.
BGA: Nothing new today.
Work: Start of day: 566. End of day: 562.
Long-term: I've almost picked out US-listed alternates for the ETF categories from last challenge. Some of the buying hasn't happened yet, so with this list in hand, I can finally finish!
It's probably all in my head, but having the window open and having the dust shaken out of the curtains and blankets has made my space feel cleaner and fresher all day. I also got enough stuff out out one of the to-be-purged piles that I could merge it with another pile. Always exciting to see proof of progress. I'm now imagining what I can do with those shelves once the stuff is gone. It would be really nice to shift the craft stuff so that I have more than two feet of closet space for my hanging clothes, but that may not be possible.
Still, I'm starting to develop piles of stuff again and I need to pay attention to them. At some point I should do another light pass through my stuff Marie Kondo style. I like the way she frames the decluttering not as "what should I get rid of?" but "what should I keep?". It makes it easier for me to get rid of things that way. (I grew up with people who didn't get rid of anything, and I am still not great at it.) I try to picture the thing in a shop and ask if I would buy it today, or even pick it up. Will I actually use and love it? Does it fit in the life I presently live, and the life I would like to grow towards? Stuff like that. It's nice to have the extra room, and I can't think of anything I got rid of that I regretted yet.
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6 hours ago, Severine said:
As an RPG packrat, this made me laugh. I totally understand.
I am that way too. I have to fight the hoarding urge in this game though. You can only carry 23 items (identical items, like those staves of teleportation, stack). And unlike most games, the stuff in your inventory is vulnerable. Potions can be broken by a cold attack, fire can burn up your scrolls and staves and arrows, and lightning can render your wands and rods worthless hunks of metal. And anything you are not wearing can be stolen. It's a good incentive to USE the stuff in your inventory; SO much better than having your "good" stuff destroyed before you can!
6 hours ago, Severine said:Sounds interesting. Do you mean writing a program for yourself or something else?
I have everything set up in Notion, but I've learned only the basics to get me going. I know there are automation features, but I don't know exactly what they can do yet, or how to do it. Example: I would love to have a list of button where I can enter a date, and it will create an item on the calendar and add a list of tasks to the task list, with due dates backdated from the date of the event. I have the calendar and task list set up, and I have a list of tasks for recurring events with the required backdate for each, but I don't know how to set up the automation part.
I have a feeling there is a LOT this program can do that would be helpful. But it takes time to climb that learning curve, and I have to do the shorter-term stuff before I can get to that. (Which is a shame, because it sounds like a lot of fun to play with and poke at.)
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Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I did not leave the house today.
Prayer: Okay, there were no alarms today either. Hopefully that is fixed now.
NerdFitness: A little bit. I posted even.
Purging: A bunch of papers - some old patterns, some notes that I took, some stuff that's now obsolete. And I found some genealogy information that I will copy into my online family tree, then get rid of too.
New Shiny:
Angband:
It was a good day for our plucky hero.
The very first thing he saw on climbing down the staircase was Saruman of Many Colours.
That is a lot of scary. At least he has lots of other options beyond SUMMONING ANCIENT DRAGONS. I teleported him away and cleared out a whole one room when he came marching back. Okay then, Saruman. Let's go. Potion of Speed and a quick prayer to whatever his deity is, and we crossed swords. This fight went easier than I had thought, mostly because he didn't do much summoning and opted to hit me rather than cast spells rather often. He teleported me away halfway through the fight - rude! - but I eventually made it back over and finished him off. Didn't drop anything good though.
Six exceptional objects, my eye.
The next level was an Omens of Death, which usually means vault country. There were two (and one vaultlike room which turned out to be fake news). First I stumbled on this one.
Chock full of monsters, but many of them are really not that bad. A couple would need to be teleported, but that's cool. And they look like they'll stay put until I'm ready for them, which is even better.
Then I found the second one.
Haha, developers. So funny.
This one also looked surprisingly doable, so I just went ahead and did it. Lured out a few things to kill one by one, then broke into the eyes and took out a couple of ancient dragons. There was a lot of good loot here. I filled up my inventory space and threw out my food to make extra room. On to the other vault!
This one required a little more care, but its design made it possible to fight just one monster at a time by taking only a few rounds of hits. So I did that, then ran in to clear out what was left. I had to teleport away only two things. And there was a bunch of good loot here as well. I made some tough decisions deciding what to throw away so I could stash it all. And if my stuffed-to-bursting inventory didn't already tell me a trip to town was in order, I noticed that the Balrog of Moria had set up camp in the hallway around the vault. Good thing there was no need to go outside.
So now I have a bunch of stuff in my house, and I have actual CHOICES about what to wear in some of the armour slots. I need to take a good look at my options and pick a good combo before heading out again. And for the love of god, remember to rebuy the crucial stuff that I dumped to make shlepping room.Notable kills: Saruman of Many Colours.
BGA: I lost really badly at Ticket to Ride three times in a row. Perhaps this was punishment for not trying something new.
Work: Start of day: 570. End of day: 566.
Long-term: No.
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On 9/22/2023 at 10:50 AM, sarakingdom said:
After that, I have @juliebarkley, Snarky, and Tank on the someday list, which coincidentally is the number of readers I need for the next prize: Victorian grape shears that were definitely not used for an inappropriate magical purpose
My copy arrived a couple of days ago. It's titled Midnight Riot instead of Rivers of London, but FantasticFiction assures me that they are the same and they have never failed me yet. I'm confident that this will not matter for prize purposes.
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3 hours ago, KeysMcGee said:
Also, I had the bright idea to reconfigure all of my planners at one of the worst possible times in my work schedule, so stuff in my world is a little bit topsy-turvy until that's sorted out. I'm here, but just getting my life in order first. Thanks for checking in!
No thanks needed. (Also congrats on your basement!)
You've mentioned this juxtaposition of life chaos or a heavy workload a couple of times. Are you like me, where if life things feel overwhelming or out-of-control, you tend to start up an organizational project or similar that you CAN control as a way of coping?
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On 9/21/2023 at 6:29 PM, Severine said:
I winced at this! Glad you still got some good loot, though.
My eyes went wide when it happened, ngl.
9 hours ago, Mistr said:I love your game reports. I used to play Moria back in the day. It was an earlier and simpler version of what you describe. I don't know that I ever won the game. It was fun, but I'm enjoying the graphics of my current game too much to want to go back to colored symbol characters.
It is a direct descendant of Moria, so that makes perfect sense.
I like the simplicity of it. (Which isn't actually all that simple - all of those colours have meaning and there is so much variety in a single letter!) I have real trouble getting oriented in 3D game environments, managing camera angles, and just being able to see/process things fast enough in the more realistic, details graphics to figure out what is going on. (A problem that otherwise mostly affects my ability to enjoy action film and my ability to drive. Though that latter is a big one.)
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Two-day update. Assume that I did basically nothing on Thursday and you have it more or less correct.
Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: Nothing either day. By my habit routine I should have exercised on Thursday, but I knew that I had D&D that day and couldn't remember the time, so I decided to check first thing on getting home. Turns out I was already almost ten minutes late. Good thing I didn't go straight to exercise!
Prayer: On Thursday, every single alarm went off while I was on my way to work, at work, or on the way home from work. Literally no opportunity. Today there would have been opportunity, but I do not recall hearing the alarm a single time. It may just need a reset - it does this from time to time.
NerdFitness: Quite a bit actually! Mostly short challenges. Turns out the best way to get me to read you challenge is to post infrequently and not attract too many followers. 😅
Purging: A random DVD for a film that I've only vaguely heard of and don't think I'll ever watch. (The reason there are so many CDs/DVDs/games on this list is that when I moved the first time, the time it would have taken to go through the maybe piles just wasn't worth the space it would save in the truck, so it was postponed in favour of more fruitful categories. It's all down to only two shelves, and I'm going through it at my leisure as I get decision fatigue quickly from it.)
New Shiny:
Angband:
The diving is lots of mostly-easy exploring, interspersed with moments of pure terror. I'm not sure if this is a bad sign that I might be a bit low and need to ease up, or a good sign that I'm not growing complacent and can spot the things that could kill me BEFORE I die.
My gear has improved a bit, but not quite as much as I'd hoped. Artifacts have been very thin on the ground on this run. Example: there is a set of daggers that are colloquially called the *thancs: Narthanc, Nimthanc, and Dethanc. These are identical, but do fire, cold, and lightning damage respectively. They are excellent early-game weapons, but usually replaced by level 30 or so. I found Nimthanc quite late, somewhere in the teens (my weapon until then was CRAP), and have found only one artifact weapon since (the pike Til-E-Arc, which I have never seen before). Well, on this run, at level 49, I finally found my second *thanc in a vault. 😂So useful. I did not bring it home. (It actually still does respectable damage because my strength is so high that it gets the full 6 hits per round.)
Oh, speaking of strength, I should give you an update on Jinjin himself.
As you can see, he's still the beauty he's always been. But those little exclamation marks next to STR, DEX, and CON? Those indicate that those stats are maxed from a character point of view. The *** on STR in the Best column show that my equipment bonuses have driven my STR right to the absolute allowable maximum. Jinjin is literally as strong as he will ever be. Ooh, and I see that he is running ever so slightly overweight after coming nowhere near the burden limit for ages. A quick glance tells me he has 40 POUNDS of Staves of Teleportation in his inventory (they are important, okay?)
I took some chances on vaults today, teleporting away some scary uniques (and a dracolisk), only to get nothing spectacular. Still, the incremental improvements have helped. I have been able to hold my own against ancient dragons as long as I am careful.
Careful is key. I have a new problem. I have been stocking up on wands and staves that do important things, like teleport too-hard monsters away, or stun, or give me a decent ranged aoe attack. But I haven't seen any scrolls to let me recharge them in the shops for three visits. None in the dungeons either. And some of the monsters are starting to drain charges from my pack to heal themselves during melee. I was briefly down to only two remaining uses of Teleport Other, which makes me nervous what with the calm-then-panic rhythm we are running on these days.
Notable kills: Gorlim Betrayer of Barahir (with my fancy hat of confusing/stun resist, he was easy), Eöl the Dark Elf.
BGA: Nothing new today.
Work: Start of day: 564. End of day: 570. Hmm. I don't remember adding things, but I must have yesterday. I worked on it only a little bit today. Need to throw some time into this.
Long-term: No.
Work stress is building up a bit. I still feel like there are a lot of moving parts to remember, and I'm constantly in danger of forgetting something. (This on top of the million smaller things that need doing, and with regular interruptions during what is supposed to be planning and concentration time. It can be very hard to focus and get things done.) I need to review the notes from our last planning session (which laid everything out in a handy schedule) and figure out how to work this into the system I've built for myself, so that I don't miss things. If I don't, I WILL miss things. And that would be bad. I have some ideas for how to keep track of these things, but not quite the technical skills to pull them off yet. So something makeshift will have to do for now.
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Are you surviving the garage project?
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Juliebarkley dives
in #117: 9/10/2023 to 10/14/2023
Posted
Me too. It was going so well until all of a sudden it wasn't. The transition was really harsh.
You missed the drama. But you get to meet the new character!
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Hello.
I'm tired. So tired.
I really haven't been able to motivate myself to do much challenge-related stuff. I would start, and then just give up partway through.
Anyway, here's my summary for the last few days, such as it is.
Ongoing Habits:
Exercise: I did a session of Recovery (I think it was). Also some walking today.
Prayer: I did not.
NerdFitness: Basically none.
Purging: Nothing. Attempts were half-hearted.
New Shiny:
Angband:
Meet Talthiel.
I have never tried out the necromancer class before. I have a spellbook with "shadow magic", and I have to try to stay in the dark or my spell success takes a big hit. My primary attack right now is Nether Bolt, which kobolds seem to partially resist (I have never seen partial resistance messages before). And I can turn into a bat. Right now, that is the limit of my powers. From what I can see from the other town spellbooks that I can read, I will soon be able to draw power from the undead to recover mana, literally suck the life from the living, and cast a disenchantment spell that raises the fail rate of enemy spellcasters dramatically (exciting because disenchantment is a very rare resistance, so it will be useful even against uniques, and ESPECIALLY since summoning is a spell).
So far it's going all right, I think. Still getting used to what's going to be easy and hard for this class, and sussing out how to make the most of its features.
Notable kills: Fang Farmer Maggot's Dog.
BGA: No.
Work: Start of day: 629. End of day: some number much higher than that. I brought home the rest of my picture book pile. It is now almost as tall as me. That is going to be a lot of new items to add to the list.
Long-term: Nope.
Tuesday I just had to go to bed early and didn't have a chance to update. I got news that my uncle died on Wednesday afternoon (following a short illness), and a kind friend offered to hang out with me to distract me. We stayed up very late talking, and I didn't update. Now I am feeling worn out, whether the lack of sleep or events or some combination thereof. Maybe I should just go to sleep, but I don't want to. I don't really want to do anything. But I will try to find some fun and then get some sleep, because that is probably what I need.