dmxrated

Brian and Emily have left while Mom and I were still asleep this morning.

Brian invited me yesterday morning to Emily's parents' house for a swim in their pool.

Before making our way there, he stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for a latte, and then at a carwash station. The lights inside the station were rotating red, white, and blue, obviously for the 4th of July season.

At the house, Karen chatted with us for a bit before we went outside. Bill was sleeping on one of the porch couches, and I think Brian spent most of the first part of our visit sunbathing while Emily and Karen played with Maris in the pool. I simply waded about in the pool.

After we came out, Brian spent a while playing with Maris in a kiddie pool, and then on the lawn itself.

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Brian had offered to take me to lunch somewhere before we'd come home, but wasn't feeling well by the time we concluded our visit.

After coming home from work and debating with me for a bit, Mom asked me if I'd like to grab a bite on the beach while she takes a swim. I went with that.

Went to Tiki Joe's, the pavillion near the beach, and ordered a double buffalo burger, and stadium pretzel, and a 32oz Fanta, for what would become both lunch and dinner for me, and then a Tiki Joe's shake, containing M&M's, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles, for dessert. (Should probably get bottled drinks and sundaes there from now on; that drink was a lot to consume, and the shake was more watery than creamy.)

Emily brought Hanalei over for a few minutes, and then took her and Maris out to play somewhere. Brian and I watched episodes 2 and 3 of Asuka.

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A huge branch full of leaves has come down from the walnut tree in our frontyard, clearly from a windstorm we had last night.

Got around yesterday to looking into uploading that Slant album, but couldn't find my external CD drive (Mom asked much later on if it might be in a bin inside the apartment loft closet, long after I had checked all the drawers in both computer desks and the living room cabinet).

Googled to see if its songs might already be up online somewhere, and found this site called AllMusic, listing Try This and three alba from a decade later (not Reindeer Pie, though) and links to Amazon and Apple Music's streaming services. Neither site actually streams them, but I did find those late-'0s alba for sale on Amazon itself.

Brian and Emily arrived for a week-long visit just shortly thereafter, and I showed Brian those three alba. He asked me why I don't just pull them up on Spotify, and while Try This and Reindeer Pie weren't there before, those other three showed right up after I installed the app on my phone.

This left the question as to why those first two alba never appeared there, the basis behind my intention to upload Try This for preservation purposes (and also to reach out for Reindeer Pie), but Brian talked me out of that.

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It was after I came home from work, without the store radio for my phone to conflict with, when I would actually listen to anything. As it turns out, the style is completely different from Try This, feeling more like country or Radiohead.

Brought up with Mom, letting her check out a few songs, and she wasn't surprised that the style would change so many years after Reindeer Pie. I let her check a few songs out, and then went upstairs with her to retrieve Try This while she straightened a few things up while Brian and Emily were out visiting Bill and Karen.

Back downstairs, we managed to hook up our old 5-disk CD player. Right from the start, Mom could see a stark contrast with the general tone of the first song, Call You On the Phone, sung primarily by Denise Hughes (specified in the booklet). She suggested I see if maybe she and others had left the band, leaving the remaining members to carry on in their own style.

I let the disk run for a few more songs, before noticing Mom outside taking care of some things. She was the one I left it on for, so I decided to turn it off then.

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Brought the whole thing up with Brian, after walking a lap down Masem Court and then discovering him chatting with Mom in the living room. That led to a great long discussion involving why most of what you hear these days on the radio and in music videos deals mostly with love, hate, sex, or dance, as opposed to anything more diverse like Steely Dan (a favorite artist of Mom's).

Brian did specify that there still are songs you can find in alba that are similar to Junk Mail and Morse Code (stuff I described you'd expect from Cab Calloway), that just don't make it into mainstream media. Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges by assuming the '40s jazz that Dad used to listen to on CD to be the equivalent of its own time to stuff on Walmart Radio (which also plays ads and quiz shows) that doesn't usually reach further back than the '70s; by equating three whole alba, each by one artist or duo, to one cherrypicked song or so each by many individual artists or bands.

Will have to ask for some suggestions on the TV Tropes forum, for equivalent songs to Sweet Dreams (La Bouche, 1994) or Oh, Sheila (Ready For the World, 1985), that specifically avoid the dominant four topics, and especially by artists who are not so reknowned and obvious as Michael Jackson.

So far, I have just made my way to Deep Darkness. With two spaces free in my inventory (not counting the one the Hawk Eye will leave), and a combined total of thirteen items you can get from Mach Pizza and the two nearby salespeople, I have decided to buy nothing after flipping tails and rolling an 8-sided 7 for one higher than said total here (will be listed throughout the walkthrough as "Stop listing."). With that, I am free to call Escargo Express for a previously damaged Super Plush Bear and my two Travel Charms back (dropped off before the monkey caves in Dusty Dunes Desert; never bought any additional charms to those or the Great Charm from Lilliput Steps, which was on Paula before her abduction).

Yesterday, though, I decided to have a break from the whole cycle of assessing everything for the next part, updating my walkthrough on Google Docs, and actual gameplay. (Not on GameFAQs, because Moonside was where I had originally ground to a halt while testing Orbay's work, and there is so little information on each page thereafter that I thought to save myself a whole sub-task for now and just update stuff right where it all was. The trip to Saturn Valley was where things got confusing for me, which is why I decided then to streamline things on GameFAQs in the first place.)

Recently, I discovered that the Brain Stone's intended function, to prevent an enemy from disabling the holder's PSI, was never actually programmed. Researching how enemy attacks in general work on the game's D-repository that someone linked me to on Discord, is what I spent half my day doing, and I just about figured out (though he does have yet to verify) how the attack data should look before its translation into Python for the CoilSnake project.

Also managed to get back to Mr. Pedal about the current draft of Rokuna's school in Starbound, and finally got around to starting The Week's new crossword earlier on before actually reading the issue itself later.

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Yesterday afternoon, I decided to boil myself some tea, but then realized that we had no whole milk down here. Mom came home just seconds later when I was about to head upstairs, told me that there isn't any there either, and had actually stopped at Trader Joe's to get that among other things before actually coming home. She offered me some, and I told her about having just made some for myself.

I checked my messages while letting it mash, but she then offered me some Earl Grey tea instead while she have what I already made (the Earl Grey mix is loose in some kind of tin, rather than bagged like regular), and I took her up on that.

Our cat had been in particularly poor health for at least several weeks, and managed yesterday to escape somewhere to die peacefully alone.

I was scheduled to start yesterday's shift at 1:30, so Mom was set to leave her own job early. Beforehand, though, she sent me a text not to let Mabel out under any circumstances, after having found her at dusk the day prior all covered in flies while laying under that boat just outside the boathouse. At some point, Mabel came to the front door wanting to go outside, and I asked Mom if we might be thinking only about what we want by keeping her inside, but part of her concern had to do with such a particularly hot day as it was, that would just make her uncomfortable as she lay dying.

She then suggested I lay a couch blanket inside her shed, where she'd have access to water within the enclosed garden. Upon coming inside from that, though, I saw her laying down in the middle of the kitchen, and brought her into my air-conditioned room, where she managed to climb onto my bed after I left her to check my messages. Upon coming back, I tried bundling her up with my blankets, and Mom came home soon thereafter for me to show her.

We decided to let her out then, when Mom assumed she would keep an eye on her, but that's when she managed to escape somewhere Mom expected her just to lie down. She was never able to find her all day since, and we weren't surprised.

Mom was sad about it, but I am grateful for her to be able to die on her terms. This actually came up last winter, when Mom didn't want her to die freezing; she told me how cats often prefer to go off somewhere to die away from any human activity, something I had also seen a video of on YouTube, and had also been demonstrated of a monkey in Our Universe, something Dad liked to watch last year.

Rest in peace, Mabel. We'll always remember the day Dad brought you home from his workshop backyard, after your mother abandoned you for more than a day even while reclaiming your littermate.

https://dmxrated.dreamwidth.org/2008/10/19/

Brian and his friends have left this morning

Mom and I installed my air conditioner yesterday, for real this time. She actually took the time to read the instructions properly, although she did tell Brian when he called later that they weren't so easy to understand as they should be.

Brian and Emily came down for Hanalei's birthday and Father's Day this weekend, arriving just half an hour after I arrived home from work.

I asked Brian if he saw that YouTube video, but he said that he hasn't even read my blog lately, where I originally figured he'd follow from. First thing he did was have a nap, and I left my blog up for him to read whenever he'd be ready, but he kept winding up busy with different things starting with a conversation with Mom after he'd wake up (I was reading The Week when I overheard).

Mom decided to order a couple of pizzas, and I went with her to pick out a cream soda and a gelato. Brian asked me to pick him up a root beer, to combine with some vanilla ice cream he had brought over for a root beer float.

Mom and I went inside together, and while I initially looked up my phone clock to decide on a soda flavor, Mom asked me to hurry up so that she could pay for everything, and I wound up defaulting instead to grape, since I never saw that flavor there before.

Brian or Emily had put on Thomas the Tank Engine for Maris while we were out, and we let that run while eating.

Shortly after I finished, I sat down and picked the remote up, and Mom asked me if there was anything I wanted to show everyone. I specified Brian in particular, and he and I instead went into the office to show him that clip once and for all.

During the buildup, he asked me if I was rolling dice to decide what to retrieve from Escargo Express, to which I specified actually zeroing in on the one Rust Promoter. (Even in the walkthrough, I usually sort whatever's relevant at a given point into groups by priority, although Rulers, Protractors, and Picture Postcards, the three items that serve no actual purpose at all, tend to be last since you might as well make such purchases "count". In this case, I had already sent the Rust Promoter in question off just before my first trek to Fourside, because there are no metallic enemies in the gold mine or the department store, and enemy encounters on the streets are so infrequent that you might as well stick to PSI instead before either a cheap or free rest in Monotoli Grand Hotel or back in Dusty Dunes Desert, or Paula's abduction in the store.)

After all played out, Brian then showed me someone's TikTok footage of Grand Theft Auto V, where they fly a blimp into some building where a cutscene awaits you, without the person you're visiting bothering to question what's going on. Here is that on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBbxlP6NXXs

Walked a lap up and down Masem Court. Upon coming back, Brian or Emily had set YouTube up for Maris with the videobook adaptation of Pecos Bill.

Emily brought Maris to her parents' house after it ended, and has spent the night there. Brian went into the apartment to sleep, so this morning is not a good time to get a recording in while he's still likely sleeping.

Sure enough, I could see a difference between what I uploaded to YouTube yesterday and the actual beginning of my recording, when I checked the latter to verify the arms dealer's menu for five items instead of four as per the Starmen.net walkthrough (I had a Big Bottle Rocket to buy as per my preceding numbers online, but would have spoken to him anyway for a price comparison with the main hack). Even though the receptionist and elevator lady's hair almost looks gray in such dreary surroundings, Paula's looks even more brown in the department store, outdoors, and the bakery (had a Lucky Sandwich, a Croissant, and two Rust Promoters to get, after having saved previously in the dept. store) than in front of the alpha channel in my palette (should I perhaps have left the background there white, unlike with commissioned graphics for Starbound?).

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It took a good bit of googling, starting during my fifteen at work, but I managed to share that video (the actual video, not just a link thereto) on Reddit and Discord. Managed to find some working instructions for Reddit on WikiHow, but someone on the Discord server Earthbound / Mother suggested I contact a mod or so there. Started with one, and then two more, one of whom was denoted online at the moment. The first one got back to me after a few hours, and said that while a bot is supposed to enable me to embed videos a week after I join, my account probably fell through the cracks. He enabled it for me, and all I had to do from there was copy the regular video link from YouTube, with the video showing up automatically upon posting.