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TL;DR: After two months of work and stress, I return to report about my growing virtual pet obsession and my foray into more PC games. I'm taking some sort of hiatus from GBF, I think? Also, I can do pixel art now!
Hey, it's been a while! A long, long while... and yes, despite the title, I'm posting this several days after Halloween. Anyway, erm, belated happy Halloween!
I'd like to say that I didn't mean to skip all my previous blog post schedules... except I did, because I've been very stressed and exhausted from work for the past two months, that by the time the weekends rolled around, I just couldn't muster the motivation to write.
I came down with a mild cold in the early part of September, but insisted on coming to work anyway. That wasn't one of my better decisions, but I didn't want to miss another week of work again. Next, for the latter part of September, I had to prepare and facilitate the training program that I've been organizing for almost a year. Despite the rocky preparation, the actual conduct went well, which I'm really thankful for. Whew!
Then, at the start of October, I had to fly to Cebu City as documentor for another training program. That was my first airplane ride ever! The entire experience was surprisingly smooth, though I'm not a fan of my ears popping. After that, I spent the remaining weeks of October preparing my documentation of that training program *and* my own.
So, yeah, that brings us to now, with me finally having some time and motivation to draft this blog post. Here are my life updates, not necessarily in chronological order.
First of all, you may have noticed that this blog has a /notes page again. After a long time of mulling over how I'm supposed to organize it, I decided to stop overthinking it and just post whatever. So far it's just my notes on my Minecraft setup, but eventually I'll add notes on other things.
Second, I've gotten around to adding this blog to more listings such as the Responsive Web Directory, the Accessible Net Directory, nownownow.com, uses.tech, and Non-Profit Bloggers. You can check those out on my /listings page. I've also joined more webrings such as the Just for Fun webring, the Void Shrooms webring, and the A11y webring, which you can check out in this blog's footer; additionally, I finally got accepted into the GEORGE webring. All hail GEORGE!
(Side note: in relation to my previous blog post, @flamed had pointed out to me that I've already been added to Kagi Small Web, since it pulls the list from the Big List of Personal Websites, where this blog is also listed. So, erm, yay?)
Third, I finally got around to making my own pixel art! I didn't learn from any tutorials, though; I've been winging the drawing and shading, before asking my boyfriend for his feedback on my pixel creations. You can check out my /cliques page for my pixel art so far, which have been submitted to the Charm Bracelets, Afternoon Tea, and Fizzy Vendors pixel cliques. The page also has my two submissions for 32-Bit Cafe's Halloween 2023 event! All the submissions from the community for this event have been gathered in one page, which I've also linked below.
32-bit Cafe Halloween 2023 event page
32-bit Cafe Halloween 2023 event submissions
So far, I enjoyed my time on the virtual pet sites that I joined. The communities are really nice, and I've had decent luck in getting the creatures I want. My collection of pixel creatures have grown so fast that my /adoptables page is extremely outdated by now: as of this writing, I have 41 fully-grown plants in Flowergame, 156 adult dragons in Dragon Cave, 67 adult creatures in The Final Outpost, and 196 adult creatures in Magistream. These include monthly-released breeds and Halloween creatures that I managed to snag. That's plenty of many digital images!
(Side note: Dragon Cave did have a slight hiccup in September, which made the community Discord server go nuts, but it was quickly resolved. On a more serious note, the developers of Magistream identified that mining gold, the main currency of the website, was causing the serious lag it experienced; they're still brainstorming other ways for players to earn gold, moving forward.)
Magistream: Goldmining is causing the lag, and must stop
However, because apparently my obsession / addiction hasn't be satiated, I decided to sign up for more pixel-art virtual pet sites. After several weeks of eager waiting, I caught the registration window for Pixel Cat's End and signed up. The community was very welcoming, and I received plenty of resources from raffles and giveaways for newcomers. Sometime later, I decided to sign up for Pixpet, which was less complicated than I thought. (I had quite some fun bidding for eggs. Thanks, my occasionally competitive nature.) These two websites are more focused on sending out creatures to collect resources, rather than earning clicks, but they're also plenty fun!
I've been less active in Granblue Fantasy for the past weeks, mainly because of my recent work schedule, partly because of my preoccupation with the aforementioned virtual pet sites, and also possibly because I've gotten all the alternate versions of the characters I want, leaving me with no other goals in the game (unless Grand Vane gets released). By "less active," I mean that I forgot about the game for so long than I accidentally didn't finish two events, and might not finish another one if I forget about it after this writing. I did participate in last month's Unite & Fight event, though, as well as this month's Dread Barrage event, but I didn't strive for as many honors as I could like before.
September 2023 Unite & Fight event
October 2023 Dread Barrage event
Honestly, I don't know what to do in this game anymore. I don't feel like building any weapons or summons, and I have fairly decent parties for now. However, I don't plan on completely quitting this game anytime soon. I'll still be active during monthly events, but I'm not playing everyday. What is this, a soft hiatus?
Virtual pet sites aren't the only things I've been spending time on: I decided to try some of the other games in my Steam library. My laptop, unfortunately, doesn't like the first Cities: Skylines, and after a half an hour of waiting for it to launch, I had my disastrous first session where I messed up the utilities and tanked my city's economy. After that, the game would crash every time I tried to start a new session. Oh well.
On the other hand, the first House Flipper ran smoothly on my laptop, and I've already clocked in about 90 hours of gameplay. I really like the cleaning and gardening parts because I find odd satisfaction in clearing the map of trash and grass. On the flipside, I have difficulty decorating because I often can't decide how things should look like and where they should go. Anyway, I moved out of the small starter office into the train from the Pets DLC, but I'm still in the middle of decorating the entire lot. I'll post pictures of my home once I'm satisfied with how it looks.
Meanwhile, I've also been spending some time on the unofficial omg.lol Minecraft server, which is now run by @nicolas. After some time wandering, I found a beach where turtles have gathered and decided to set up camp there. My current priority is to gather more resources so I can build a proper house on the beach. (Yes, I'm building a house on a beach again, just like on the MelonLand server.)
@robb's fundraiser for St. Jude's Children Research Hospital ended last month, and he posted the final numbers of the campaign. @adam also posted a report on omg.lol's contribution to the campaign. It's so awesome to see how much people have raised for charity!
Robb's blog post on his St. Jude 2023 sub-campaign
omg.lol's St. Jude Fundraiser Report
(Side note: as Adam mentioned in a prior blog post, omg.lol now has a Matrix server! He also built a website specifically for auctioning lifetime addresses on omg.lol, previously on behalf of the St. Jude campaign. Currently, there's an ongoing auction until November 15, and this time half of the proceeds will go to the Trevor Project!)
omg.lol: Rare lifetime address auctions supporting St. Jude
omg.lol: Happy November! Flash Sales & Lifetime Membership Auction
In other news, the Organization for Transformative Works held another membership and donation drive last month. After the drive ended, they posted a report on the total number of contributions and new members. (Yup, I donated again, even though I also donated during their previous drive, which was just last April.)
Organization for Transformative Works October 2023 Donation Drive announcement
Organization for Transformative Works October 2023 Donation Drive report
... Yeah, for a supposedly Halloween-themed post, I didn't mention how I celebrated Halloween. That's because our family doesn't: growing up, we didn't have decorations or costumes. That's fine by me — all I care about is the candy. (We often have candy in the house, though, because our entire family loves candy.)
Anyway, that's what I've been up to for the past weeks. Hopefully, I'll get into the rhythm of weekly blog posts again. See you all next week!