The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

I've spent daaaaays working on a Sims 4 default replacement skin but keep running into frustrating problems above and beyond the usual 'shit I didn't blend this right and now there's a big ugly seam' issues. Like, this package with all the default face part textures hasn't actually been updated since it was uploaded 5 years ago, and now there's more! but WHOOPS you can't get to them anymore because EA changed the file format of certain texture images and no one has worked out a tool to extract them yet. Or like, it doesn't matter how many times you re-import your images into this package, they're suddenly not going to update properly for mysterious reasons, and it might be the skim builder program doing it but the most recent version doesn't window correctly for you and hides the save button!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻

Anyway I wouldn't have these problems if I wasn't a picky bitch who hates something about every other existing skin texture out there, but there we are.

 

Hades fun, even if after a couple of runs my brain is crispyfried. But today I went from not being able to get past Meg to getting all the way to Elysium! ... the autofire upgrade for the bow and weakness debuff for it helped. Ty Aphrodite ; ;

 

I usually dread my impending birthdays because of old emotional issues, but this year I have a genuine, tangible reason to dread it. I wonder what fascist fuckery I'll get to remember this one by?

 

I am real fuckin' mad at every asshole who, in the wake of the tinpot dictator being booted from twitter and his pet nazis losing parler, only NOW suddenly care about the reach of huge corporations. Now that the guy who tried to overthrow the motherfucking government and murder fairly elected officials got booted for inciting violence, it's suddenly a problem that twitter enforced their ToS? Now that the site rife with hate speech was seen for the hotbed of racism and incitement to violence that it was, it's a problem they got their hosting yanked?

Even at my most charitable read (and you assholes are stretching my charity mighty motherfucking thin right now), I think you're being a bunch of self-absorbed nitwits who need to learn how to pick a better time for airing your concerns (like, uh, years ago when they pulled this shit on people who weren't hurting anyone). At my slightly less charitable I think you're being a bunch of self-absorbed nitwits who need to have a good think on what's more important, everyone being able to say whatever they want wherever they want, no matter what it is or who they are, or preventing mass murder?

And at my less charitable, I think you need to have a REALLY BIG FUCKING THINK ON WHY YOU'RE RUSHING TO DEFEND THE 'RIGHT' OF MOTHER FUCKING NAZIS TO INCITE VIOLENCE, MASS MURDER, AND OVERTHROW OF THE GOVERNMENT, YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKERS.

I'm yelling here to resist yelling at people on Tumblr but boooooy fucking howdy, my patience is being tested.

 

Happy birthday! May your day be peaceful and your Twitter feed free of eedjits.

 

Thank you!

 

Ordered Indian for dinner from a place I like -- it's high quality and their menu labels foods that are lactose and gluten free, so I feel safe ordering from there. Got chicken korma, paneer pakora, and a mango lassi. BIG portions, the pakora comes with this intensely green dipping sauce that's both spicy and minty, the rice is seasoned, and the lassi is actually lassi and not just mango-flavored drinkable yogurt. I ate myself nearly into a food coma and I still have enough left for another meal.

Cake (which I am currently too full to eat) is some kind of lemon tart thing I found in the frozen section, one of two wheat-free cakes on offer. I'm not sure how it will be but the brand looks decent quality, at least.

 

Been busy!

Working fairly steadily on a personal writing project, and got involved with *another* friend's project long-term (I'm already on call to copyedit Path to Timbala's scripts as Elanor Pam writes them) that we're all really excited about. I also finally got signed up for a Python class -- the last time I tried to sign up it just... ate my registration? And by the time I remembered to email the school it was late enough in the year I didn't think I could get it done before the deadline, so I just waited for the term to switch over. I also signed up for an Elements of AI class while I was at it.

Got a little slowed up by being sick or sleep-deprived last week (just a minor cold on the sickness front, and the sleep dep is due to my loud-ass stinky cat), but eh.

I'm still anxious as hell about the state of the world, but... idk. I had some moments of clarity, I guess, like it isn't a waste of time doing these things even if everything goes to hell, but it's a waste to wait until things are okay to do them.

 

Oh and I don't have to feel bad about wanting to replace my substandard-but-still-newish coffee maker anymore because it straight up stopped working this morning! Turns on and... does nothing. So, fuck it. I got a coffee press for the time being until I can get something I don't feel like I'm *settling* with.

 

I have in actual fact been enamored with our coffee press. I thought it was just a hipster thing and coffee is coffee, but no, the flavor profile actually does change depending on how you brew it and I've found pressed coffee to be less bitter than your typical automated maker coffee.

 

It's kind of a pain in the ass compared to a drip maker, but at least I can get properly hot coffee out of it. I knew my crappy one wasn't getting the water as hot as I would have liked but I didn't realize how lukewarm it was until I gave the press a test run just now. I put milk in my coffee and it wasn't cold after 5 minutes!

 

Considering I finished FFXV like... last spring, I should probably change my thread title, huh?

 

Oh wait that's not entirely true, there's the Prompto and Ardyn DLCs I haven't done yet, but

eh.

I feel kinda dumb because I had to buy Ardyn's DLC separately and did but I just cannot bring myself to care about him. I already have Emet-Selch, who is everything they were trying to do with Ardyn, but way better.

 

My sensitivity to wheat is bad enough now it kind of scares me. I spent Sunday night descending into misery that continued all Monday and into Tuesday, all because I was careless in reading labels and ate five chocolate candies containing a little core of licorice, which is made with wheat flour. The cores are, hmm, maybe a centimeter in diameter? I started realizing something was amiss when it hit me that the particular texture of those cores is not something you get with other thickeners, and oh, my mouth feels blistered.

Five candies and I was sick as hell all the next day! (And of course I've been forgetting to buy antihistamines so I just had to sit there and suffer.) It's worrying.

 

lkjslfjfj I keep trying to get ANYWHERE in a sims save file but I keep having to fuss with mods because they're doing weird shit or having undesirable results. I have a rather, uh, adult mod, primarily for the attraction and body shape systems, but I swear to god it's making sims be as heterosexual as possible unless I specifically set their attraction, EVEN THOUGH I set heterosexuality to a low, low chance, and these same sims often start out with flirting with my sims of the same gender. ???

(And then there was the guy who came to visit my sim, flirted with him, and then when his roommate also came up to visit he started getting it on with her in my sim's living room. The hell, mod? I can't let you have any permissions!)

And I'm not sure which one keeps forcibly removing the facial hair and lip blush from one of my sims or what keeps resetting his body shape to default but it's suuuuuper annoying.

 

Me, going through the pre-made households: why does Gemma Charm look like that

Me: oh, they just kinda threw whatever on the poor kid, huh

Minus the makeup and awful hairstyle, her main problem is that her head is too wide, and that's an easy fix. As it was, I was wondering if she was supposed to look like she was part toad. No, they just overloaded her with makeup that didn't suit her and gave her a hairstyle that made her head look even wider. Short hair looks good on her, long hair looks good on her, but short bangs and a chin-length bob that's all wide at the bottom is a really bad combo.

Emilia is actually worse -- she's got a boring template face under her horrible helmet hair. I gave her a different nose and slightly different mouth (and different hair because GOOD LORD THAT IS THE WORST HAIRSTYLE) just to make her look a little more like a character.

 

I know I've hit the winter doldrums when literally all I want to do is play a Sims game.

 

*giant hugs*

 

SAD lowpoint speedrun where I barely move from my desk chair, barely eat, and barely drink for two days, then am suddenly Fed Up and want to do stuff again

(I don't trust this feeling to persist like actually being out of the woods will, but it feels like a SAD lowpoint speedrun)

Recovering from that sucked, I legit thought I was getting sick most of yesterday as my body reeled from having actual food and hydration, but I was feeling okay again come late evening. I'm fine this morning!

 

Slowly building up a Sims 4 base save file where things are spruced up the way I want them, and I'm currently working on the houses. Some are fine, lots more have okay shells but bizarrely sparse interiors, and some are ugly inside and out. It's very strange which houses are a whole lot of nothing -- like the Roswells' in Strangerville. The exterior looks okay, but the interior is big echoing rooms with a couple of pieces of furniture. One bedroom is a double bed on a diagonal, and then a single bed up against the wall for some reason?? I thought the huge empty house with a bizarre number of bedrooms might be a characterization choice, but no -- the group of artsy friends living nearby has a house almost as big and devoid of personality.

It's one thing to do this with the uninhabited houses, but inhabited ones where the residents have backstories???

I think all the houses from the minor packs have this problem -- which is very weird in Strangerville's case since its whole gimmick is that it has a mystery storyline to play out. Most of the major packs have much better thought out houses... except for Get Famous, where the celeb homes are all vast, empty, and devoid of personality. Like, I think real life Rich Person Minimalism is boring and devoid of personality, but those houses don't even have that. Even Judith Ward's house has so little furniture it looks more like she's squatting in it (and this woman is supposed to be a super ambitious global superstar who is clearly based on the most divaish silver screen stars of the mid-20th century).