Emergency services came to Masem Court this morning. I went out to see what was going on, and spotted Chester and his dog near the Weidners' house. He specified that Jerry was having chest pains.

So after a day of dead ends yesterday, I've finally found something this morning that matches what I'm seeing:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vcbRngE38g

Turns out the clip's at least a year old, so even if it gets resolved now, it's bound to happen again when my current views are more than a year old and would no longer count anyway.

Yesterday was originally going to be one of my longest days at work, from 7 AM to 4 PM, and I got up at 4 AM to be able to do stuff before my bus would supposedly come. At around 6:30, I checked the SCAT app to see how much longer I should expect for the bus to arrive, but it said I had scheduled it for between 10:30 and 11. Called Mom to see if she would be able to come home to drive me, but the earliest time cut too close to the bus' time, so I decided just to use some PPTO for a late arrival at 11:30, turning that shift into the shortest I've had in a while.

Managed to do Mom a couple of favors at different times that she called the house for, and alert some people online to my new video.

Also tried signing up for this funding site I discovered the other day called Buy Me a Coffee. However, clicking Next after putting my userpage together doesn't lead to the next setup page like it's supposed to, and I went on to try emailing the support team, starting a chat on Twitter, and filing a bug report on a site called webcompat.com, to no avail so far.

This only occurred to me to mark down while she was using my phone this morning, but the other day, while a phone's keyboard is black by default, Mom's had somehow turned a light purple. She asked me about how to fix that, one of those things I always try to revert just to maintain a sense of control over things I operate, and I took then as a cue to consider some other color available for it.

Got around to that the next morning, and upon seeing stock images of various landscapes available amongst gradients or plain colors, I decided instead to set Natsuki's beach scene from Getter Love!! as my background.

This deal with food all has to do with Earthbound as the inspiration for my main project, a Lucky Star fangame I talk regularly about on Dreamwidth and said some stuff about on Reddit for [an upcoming] video. That, as you can guess, is exactly why I will be giving Earthbound the first honor for both ROMhacks and playthroughs.

-The end of my second-to-next video. (I've just put the upcoming one together, and now Chris (Skyrum Experts on Upwork) is in charge of the finishing touches before I upload it.)

Checked my Starbound tab yesterday, and discovered that I actually haven't used it that much these past two years since I gave up on any personal programming. What can I say, most of my work there since one extensive Google doc last year has been revising or critiquing individual graphics from other people, and I've been focusing a lot more since March on my Earthbound walkthrough while playing through that side-hack.

So, here's the lowdown:

Currently, I have a version from Chris, of the hallway in Konata's house to polish up and revise, before sending back to him to add some of the furniture. That, to be honest, hasn't been moving along as quickly as I expected, due to unrelated work from others I've had to look over and an obsession I've been having with my next video script after putting my upcoming one together, and it's a good thing I have today off from my job, plus a ten-day vacation next week that I had requested for while my mother goes on a vacation.

The other day, I pulled someone's sprites of the player characters up on GIMP, mainly to lower their noses by one pixel to look more anime-like. I started with Kagami, third place in the overall party but the first character to actually comprise your party before the actual leader, her second-cousin Rokuna, meets her and her friends somewhere. Went on to look over Rokuna, her boyfriend Mondo, and Tsukasa, and noticed that their arms were all one pixel shorter.

Also noticed that, while the same person who created the current cover image (planning to have someone else redo from scratch in the future), who gave Mondo a more reasonable version of his original hairstyle from Mon Colle Knights (long story why I imported him and Rokuna in the first place) to fit the setting of Lucky Star, did give him back his original style for an attempted spritesheet of my own in 2019, I probably should have shown that one to Maria for reference a few years later before she'd get started. The other day, though, Chris did offer to do other kinds of work once he's done with my video, while still awaiting my revision of the hallway; I am probably going to give him both the failed spritesheet and Mondo's actual spriteset at that point. (Still have eight more characters to tweak myself once I'm done with the hallway.)

I also have someone's outline of Rokuna and Mondo's school to look over. Recently, he showed me a more complete version, but there were detail discrepancies everywhere, and I spent days trying to fix up what I thought would just take one or two before he agreed just to start over and pay more attention to exact pixel widths and such instead of just eyeballing. (He had also worked on the exteriors of Tsukasa and Kagami's house, Rokuna's house, Konata's house, a shrine, and a convenience store.)

Once I catch up with those few things, I am planning to blow off some steam with The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (been following stuff on the 3D remaster on-and-off, but am very much sticking with 2D), also for a change in pace from not even just Earthbound, all five core games. (I never played past the prologue despite completing that part, having restarted multiple times for one reason or another as had already become a pattern with other games, and the last time I've played that game was late in October 2020 (undocumented between Marenian Tavern Story: Patty and the Hungry God and Lisa: The Painful RPG, neither of which I got very far into either).)

Since Starbound was only about a third of that list from what I copied to Reddit (here's why, btw), here, again, are just the items that actually pertain to that, for when I return to business:

• Proofreading what started out as a list of tasks through which to determine what places I’ll need for each area in Starbound (it went on to cover the game’s story and structure in general).


• Proofreading a story outline I once hired someone on Upwork for, and determining which events need to go, that are too easy for people to default to (I am not looking for all the first places or concepts someone thinks of when thinking of other parts of the world).


• Organizing a script from there for a video through which to reach out to people actually living in the relevant parts of the world. (The description there is where I will link to stuff, and I will also embed the video on a subreddit specifically about the 2000s, in order to reach out specifically to people who actually remember that era.)


• This will first require commissioning people on sites like Upwork for some concept footage to showcase.


• Exploring images from Windows Spotlight, to decide on places for the party to visit, that are still relatively obscure but less mundane than the regular small towns of Onett, Twoson, and Threed in Earthbound, or Washimiya/Kuki and Satte, Saitama Prefecture, in Lucky Star. (Naturally, those taken in parts of the world already planned for the game will take priority.)


• A separate file for some individual ideas of mine, which will remain private until enough people contribute their own ideas first.

Mom and I had one of our walks down the beach yesterday.

On our way there, she took a detour to show me two out of three houses she told me about that burned down just the other week.

At the end of our walk, she joined me this time as I bought some stuff to eat at the pavillion, asking me to get her some fries before I went in to order.

Karen greeted me at work yesterday, and told me she paid Brian et al a visit this past weekend.

Two days ago, I found a few boxes in a cart, one of which was stuffed with newspapers. I extracted the sections with any comics or puzzles inside, and brought those to my locker before coming back to the cart itself to bring inside.

Mom had scheduled a barber visit for me yesterday, and we were originally going to tie in this restaurant near this new establishment she's been taking me lately, called Reese's 1900, to show me a better place than Friendly's to get a burger.

Yesterday morning, I looked at the menu that she emailed me, and there are only three burgers on that, and only one of them has any toppings besides cheese in them (just bacon). Decided instead on some fried scallops.

Having had off from work, I wound up having a burger for lunch, and we wound up postponing Reese's when Mom asked me over the phone what I had for lunch, specifying then what the point was, for my next day off after Labor Day coming up. (I honestly don't think I'm gonna notice much of a difference in taste, but am still willing to humor her when she got such a poorly assembled sandwich at Friendly's.)

We still got my haircut, since I could use a smoothed-out beard before recording myself for that video (I usually don't worry about that otherwise).

-

These past couple of days, Brian sent us some old pictures of me at people's apartments and dining out on Uguu Blue. One of these was at Arvind's old apartment, from which he specified in 2018, and it was then that I realized that one of his current friends was someone whose name I had forgotten since, whom I had introduced to Lucky Star before we ate out at Punjab.

https://dmxrated.dreamwidth.org/2018/10/02/

(Having just re-read the entry myself again, I have just added a hyperlink retroactively to an earlier entry still, in case anyone's interested in that.)

Decided upon Bagel Boss for lunch yesterday. While selecting the details for my bagel, the list of spreads, the first list presented on the app after "Bagel/Flagel Shmear", gave me this option called "Sunflower", but with no accompanying image. I selected that, wondering what it was, before placing the rest of my order.

When I got there, I did get my snack and drink, but no bagel. Turns out the bagel didn't even appear on the receipt, and I had to re-order in person what turned out to be the type of bagel itself, before choose my filling (lox-and-scallion cream cheese).