Rained Out

Aikirees drinking a tea sitting next to me, while reading a book glancing at her with the caption 'Monday Morning Weekend Recap' off to the left.

The rough was dealing with another roof leak, which was found & plugged as best as possible during a rain storm, and then losing nearly all of my work time in the process.

The good was just about everything else. Family evening was really wonderful, and getting everything else done went fairly well but just not a lot of downtime – just consistently moving between tasks. Some server work got done, but still have to add a few more that I queued up over last week, but that I can worry about this weekend.

It’s going to be a very long week ahead. Y’all kick tails and have a wonderful Monday & week!

Good Riddance

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

I’m going to open with this article from the wonderful folks over at MassivelyOP and my only remark to it (and for anyone, and I mean anyone) who knows me is this, and forgive my vulgarity: Good. Fucking. Riddance. I have been very loud about how I absolutely loathe the modding community in Final Fantasy XIV, and seeing this coming to an end is nice to hear. Not Sorry.

With that rather out of characteristic vulgar quick-rant out of the way – it’s still pretty chaotic on the RL side, with me certainly bringing more work home for the weekend. Not as much, however, so I’ll hopefully be able to dedicate a little bit more to relaxing – there will be some server work too, which is always fun to do. Biggest hurdle now will be addressing what needs to be done, and very quickly, soon thereafter we get over a machine being down.

Hopefully everyone’s Friday goes wonderfully, and y’all have a weekend to match!

Bleeding the Midnight Oil

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

My concern about how this week kind of ballooned overnight with the project escalating into something far more obscene. My bigger concern is if any of this will overtake part of this upcoming weekend, which already has plans involving family. The work/life is really starting to kilt to levels where I left the industry the first time and that’s not good.

Hoping to swerve the course at least a bit today and tomorrow in hopes of it being a bit better. Ended up pulling yet another skilled injury the other day (if you know me, this is par for the course) which has made things a little bit more comically slower, but it is recovering just fine. Hoping dearly that this will all come to some sort of head right before Labor Day Weekend.

As for Labor Day Weekend itself, I might have mentioned visiting ‘home’ where Aiki and I started out in our adventures through Eorzea, but that might just depend on how things are going. The Rising Event comes back the 27th, which means the long ‘lost’ Aryiah will be visiting after being absent for almost a year. It would be nice to hang out at the Moonfire cruise ship sometime over this upcoming weekend (or Monday) with some/all of EOCA, but realistically I keep seeing that idea fleeting with everything upcoming.

Hopefully I’m incorrect to some capacity, but just have to see. There is a level of guilt that I’m continued to be reminded about throughout – it’s been linger a long time now, which hasn’t helped things, but not anything I have time to really address (or even explain) at the moment. Just have to keep moving forward.

Anyrate, y’all have a wonderful Friday Eve! Y’all got this!

Inquiries

Elizara watching attentively as Laureine crafts on an anvil.

It was a later part of the evening, near nightfall. Just about everyone had retired at this point to their respective quarters, homes, and couch in Lizicus’ case. Just the faint dim light and sound emitting from HQ’s workshop could be seen and heard.

Miss Laureine taking a little moment to finalize reports on the airships from their previous journeys through the Sea of Clouds, along with some minor repair work. While doing so, the sound of her hammer hitting the anvil to create the repair parts attracted only one person getting ready to head back to the familiar place Reinylla was sleeping: Elizara.

Laureine deep in thoughts & focus on her work hadn’t noticed Elizara enter the workshop, nor did she say anything to Laureine to let her presence be known. Instead, she cautiously walked close by and sat down beside her and just watched as Laureine toiled over the anvil. Once Laureine noticed Elizara sit down, she gave her a warm smile of acknowledgement before returning to her work. Elizara just continued to watch with sharp focus as she continued to finish up the repair parts.

Once she was all done, a small silence filled the workshop, with only the low humming of the navigation panel and project in progress’ HUDs making any sort of noise.

“Hey, uh–“

Elizara began to say while still sitting on the floor.

“Hmm, yes, Mistress?”

At this point Laureine had already gotten up to examine the airship console to oversee repairs.

“…what’s it like to have those horns and a tail?”
Laureine paused completely on her task to think a moment, but soon thereafter let out a soft humored sigh before finishing up right-quick. Without saying anything, she walks back over to where Elizara was still sitting; the look on her face was both curious and worried as she might have asked something overly offensive.

Instead, Laureine squats down, smiles, and curls her tail in front of the both of them.

“Here, Mistress.”

She holds the end of her tail out as an offering to Elizara. Reluctantly, Elizara holds it gently, feeling the warm scales across her fingers. She lets out a quick quiet laugh flashing a smile across her face, and then releases Laureine’s tail.

“I-it’s not what I expected, but thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, Mistress.”

Elizara excited fires off a handful of questions towards Laureine, and as best as she can answer them. They spend a bell or so doing this just sitting in the Workshop before the both of them retire for the evening. Elizara manages to safely make it back to where Reinylla is resting, as does Laureine to the quietness of her chambers.

It seemed to have been a good evening to help Elizara feel more more comfortable than she has been prior, and hopefully with that a good night’s rest alongside Reinylla.

Happy Moonfire Faire 2025!

Aikirees and I at the Moonfire Faire for 2025 with fireworks in the background.

Happy Moonfire Faire y’all! May y’all have an absolutely wonderful one this year!!

I think this year’s might be one of my favorites thus so far. The new ship combines almost all of the assortments of entertainment that Moonfire is known for and adds upon it! It kind of reminds me of the really fun and scenic All Saints’ Wake’s Sneaky Hollow they added a few years back but with the jumping puzzle included. The music on the boat changes at night time also to give it that nightly concert vibe; it’s really something to behold.

The event quest itself is pretty short, which seems to be the par for the course with all of the recent ones. There’s some folks who don’t tend to like this, but I’ve never really minded it being on the shorter side to be honest, and with a place to simply just hang out after the fact has far more weight to it personally. The outfit this year is basically a wetsuit with a hoodie and sandals, and it dyes really well – it’s really nice!

Moonfire Faire in general has always had a special place in my heart, and it was also when ‘Totally Not a Gazebo Day’ event happened, which that in itself was such a fun time. I digress, however, and I wish y’all the very best Moonfire Faire season, and certainly head on out to Limsa Lominsa/Costa del Sol to enjoy all of the festivities that the event has to offer!

Hoping to see this make a return for a few years if not more thereafter, as it is really fun nice place to vibe for the season.

Work Bleed Over

Aikirees drinking a tea sitting next to me, while reading a book glancing at her with the caption 'Monday Morning Weekend Recap' off to the left.

While not necessarily a negative, but there has been some work ‘bleed over’ into the weekends due to an overwhelming amount of work going on. It wasn’t overburdening, but just part of the weekend ordeal.

Overall, it was a pretty decent one – got some tasks taken care of while dealing with the usual weekend routines and maintenance. The NAS has been cleaned up and reorganized as well – including remote access, which has helped in regards to getting into it from work.

Started to watch the new season of Wednesday since I caught up for now on Strange New Worlds. I think this part of Wednesday is fairly short, so once that’s done, I’ll head back into Strange New Worlds. Some media server work in there for good measure and a little bit more crafting progress around Eorzea. With Moonfire Faire happening, it’s taken a little bit of all our time up.

The next couple of weeks are probably going to be absolutely chaotic, working on a semi-big project, but hopefully won’t take away too much from here, or personal life – we’ll see.

Happy Monday y’all! Kick tails! Y’all got this!!

Sisters’ Fashion Report Adventure LXI

Aikirees and I wearing long green tailcoats, with fancy top hats and Aikirees posing for the photo.

Episode LXI! – We now have hats, and I… think she thinks she’s the Cat in the Hat at the moment? I-I’m really not certain, but then again, there are times I’m really not exactly sure what (or where!) my sister is thinking about.

Summer Vibes

Me wearing beach attire with a large wide-brimmed straw hat sitting in shallow beach water.

I’ve had this Moonfire Faire outfit for five years now – it came out during the 2020 season’s. At the time, and up until this latest patch, was unable to wear the hat that came with it. After all of this time, I’m finally able to dawn the dearly missed wide-brimmed straw hat to complete my summer vibing.

Right in time for this year’s Moonfire Faire no less, so I’m certain it’ll get a bit of use in coinciding with my usual hair ribbon too.

Oops

Me sitting in HQ's lounge with a cup of coffee looking over things on my tomestone device.

I.. uhh.. Sorry y’all, kind of been distracted and pretty busy. Everything is well, and the past weekend was good. Patch 7.3 was cleared in its entirety at this point in time and was a pretty enjoyable experience overall with really only one semi-sour spot happening. So all in all, I’d give this Patch start the best of Dawntrail thus so far.

Got to get back to it, but happy Wednesday! Halfway there now, and y’all enjoy the Moonfire Faire! It looks really fun (I mean, it always is) so head on out to Costa del Sol for some fireworks, new party barge and goodies alike! We’ll check it out over the weekend.

Kick tails!

Dawning the Trail 7.3

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

Midweek and I am so behind on rest; very much no rest for this Viera.

Just more long days, but the cousins got their chance to head into Patch 7.3’s MSQ last night and thankfully finish it. That’s not to be taken as it was disliked, quite the contrary, just due to weekly planning it would have off-kilted the rest of the week.

Aiki and I are up tonight to blaze the Trail of 7.3, which then just leaves the new raid for the tail end of the week. Weekend then will just be clearing up all of the items we normally do, but missed throughout the week. As for the weekend, probably a nice and actually for once, relaxing one.

Happy Midweek y’all! Kick tails!

Success

Aikirees drinking a tea sitting next to me, while reading a book glancing at her with the caption 'Monday Morning Weekend Recap' off to the left.

Kind of a quick one, but this past weekend was a really good success. The system upgrade/change to Linux went almost near darn perfectly, so now it’s just refining settings and learning a lot more about it now. Even got a few Windows games to run within it just like they would normally do so under Windows itself.

Watched more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and kind of just meandered around Eorzea, so it was a pretty good balance of productivity and relaxing. Not as much sleep as I would have liked, but the accomplishments with the system more than makes up for it.

Happy Patch 7.3 Eve y’all and Happy Monday! Kick lots of tails this week! Y’all got this!!

A Friday and a Farewell

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

Happy Friday y’all! Almost the end of another long and weary week. Hopefully everyone’s has been going well!

Usual weekend routine coming up, but along with that going forward with another system overhaul (hence the farewell notion). These usually are kind of a bittersweet process, and this one is not different as this system in particular has been running pretty much the original of itself since I built it right after my life’s hard reset over 10 years ago.

So, even with it being a good transition to continue operating, it is kind of also sad to see it’s current form go. Depending on who’s reading this, that might either sound silly or relatable – guess it just depends on how it’s looked at, and either way it’s fine. Ideally done to a point before dinner Saturday as well, and that should be doable.

Not much else really planned but being around Eorzea a bit more, possibly some Forbidding the West time depending on how I feel. The big 7.3 patch next week (and it looks CHONK) should be good, as long as I can keep my frustrations with the player-base down to a minimal that is.

Kick tails today, and have a wonderful weekend y’all!

Nudgin’ Along

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

Kind of a delayed start to the reset week last night, but for good reason – was working on a small semi-emergency project in the home office that just took a bit longer than I was anticipating. I have no idea why I do that still as every project always goes way over time-budgeted.

Probably going to pull the trigger and initiate the next task this weekend, but try to weave it between miscillany tasks around Eorzea and the Saturday Dinner Evening routine. It kind of has to be done by said dinner, otherwise it may end up being a repeat of last weekend, which I absolutely do not want to happen again for a very long while (or Labor Day weekend, whichever).

Not much else, just going through the days. Still trying to get a timeline for the rest of the year at least penciled out, but with Hurricane Season looming, it could end up making it look like a bowl of spaghetti again like last year.

Time will tell, but in the mean time, y’all have a wonderful Wednesday!

You Are My Sunshine

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

Now that I’ve gotten a bit of rest and reverted back to the weekday schedule, hope everyone had a lovely Monday!

The weekend was 50/50, well probably more 75/25 (good vs rough). The NAS showed up early so I was able to get that together, which was actually really good since that took a lot longer to set up than I had anticipated it to. Mostly on the settings side: the actual getting it up and running was a breeze. It’s something I should have done years ago after Vladimir passed away. Better late than never for certain, but with this, I can continue to either go Windows 11 (Rufus or not) or Linux Mint depending on scenario – and I only have 2 devices left thankfully. However, I fear the Home Office overhaul is coming up sooner than later.

The rough patch of the weekend was trying to outroot a syncing issue across devices, that just didn’t make any sense and I spent way too much time into the early morning hours trying to fix it. I never really did, but I ended up with only 3 hours of sleep because of it, which caused a huge rush of frustration at myself to stay awake. It was really trivial in the overall scenario of things, but when my determination goes into something, sometimes I have a hard time stopping until all conclusions have been exhausted. I think I would have been less frustrated if I wasn’t working so much these days.

Started watching the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 3 as of this writing), and it’s so good to be back! Missed the show and it’s been a blast thus so far! When it’s all said and done I’ll be a bit bummed to see it go, but Starfleet Academy does look pretty good from the trailer.

OmOneko has been 100% completed: all achievements, all routes, and all endings good, bad, and indifferent. I really enjoyed the entirety of it and really am excited to see more of this world’s universe in the future. Some of the indifferent endings were pretty comical, and boy howdy the bad ones are very much that. Team Clawdia all the way and no one can stop me. They also have two soundtracks from the game(story?) available, for in which of course I’m going to get those and have them on the media server – they’re really good.

That should cover it for now, last week before Patch 7.3; let’s make it an awesome one, and y’all have a wonderful Tuesday!

Nope

Me asleep on the bottom bunk bed in Final Fantasy XIV with my assistant checking on me.

I’ll… make remarks throughout the week – so no Monday Morning Recap. The weekend had a huge hit, and a fairly big miss. The miss is kind of overshadowing the hit unfortunately.

Hopefully y’all had a wonderful weekend, and here’s to just such a week ahead! Kick lots of tails!

Nekos – Part 2

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

First and foremost, happy Friday y’all! Hope everyone has had a wonderful one this week!

Mostly just the usual here, a lot of busy and a little sleep – still trying to work on that one but eventually I suppose. Aside from the usual Final Fantasy XIV weekly routines, been slowly reading OmOneko either to unwind or to get the evening started up.

OmOneko-wise, last night I cleared another story path’s route, but kind of both unintentionally and intentionally got to a point that I probably should have waited until I finished all three paths. Will probably try to make this a major objective for this weekend as I’ve really been engrossed with the setting and the characters – assuming what minor project tasks I need to address don’t take too long.

Final Fantasy XIV-wise, we’re pretty close to being as ready as possible for 7.3, which drops in about 2 weeks now. From what I’ve seen on the trailer, looks to be pretty climactic with what’s going on so far and the new Final Fantasy XI raid appears to have us going to at least San d’Oria, Qufim, and Delkfutt’s Tower while also dealing with a couple of familiar faces from Aikirees’ First Life. Will be interesting to see what else in there awaits, and the story itself.

Well, back to it, but y’all have a very wonderful day and weekend ahead!

Dragon Tails: An Old Book

Laureine looking at Lizicus while she's holding a book with two winglet panels jetting out from both sides.

Lizicus is somewhat a paradoxical creature. She loves to sleep her days away (usually on the couch in HQ’s upper-entry lounge to get some sun from the window and the fire’s warmth), tends to take everything carefree (to the chagrin of Miss Laureine), and just tends to not worry all that much to be in the now.

However, on the other side she can be deeply sentimental, easily be gazing off into the distance lost in her own thoughts, listen to the people around her and give out some deep advice, or come to the rescue of folks in need.

In this instance, the book she holds. It’s an old book of mine that I have long replaced with a new functional set. Years back, the tablets that spring out stopped functioning properly and the pages grew dim. I just decided to place them in The Archives’ foyer area as an old memento of those early times seeking out Aikirees. However, a curious Au Ra fell upon them and decided to try and fix then.

Miss Laureine, try as she might, never really could get them to work just like they used to – she did manage to get the pages to glow almost like they used to. Moving on to Allagan and Alexandrian technologies, she left the books in her chambers. Meanwhile Lizz, being her usual self, had misplaced her set of rather well-loved books and was in dire need of a pair. Laureine offered her my old books, and after explaining the story behind them, promised to take good care of them.

She did in fact do so, and even without it being fully functional, has managed to thrive in her Archanist skills with them. She protects them quite well, and to this day have never seen them worse for wear – almost the complete opposite sans the tablets. Miss Laureine has mentioned in passing with a little bit of annoyance that she might have drawn a couple of cute doodles on the screens: one of them I know is her and Miss Laureine, but she won’t tell anyone what the other is. It might be us, or it might be something/someone else, but I didn’t mind hearing that she had drawn on it at all, which I believe was a relief to Miss Laureine as well.

Lizicus really is something unique, and even if she’s a bit of a pain to her cousin, she does always mean well in the end to her and to everyone she meets that she calls family or friend.

Rearranging Projects (Again!)

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

I catch myself asking this from time to time, and probably other folks & friends do too: ‘Do you do this on purpose?’

The short answer is no; sometimes yes, I’ll get on a roll with working on tasks/projects and just want to keep up the momentum, rest be darned. This time, however, I had to really reconsider if this was what I wanted to do. So basically, instead of the big finale home project being planned for early next year, that’s more than likely being pushed out till early spring.

The reason for this is to do some much needed work around the home office and get everything ready for end of October as I thought I was doing alright. It’s not a huge undertaking but it’s something that I should have probably researched a lot better shortly after Vladimir passed away. So, now it’s just all rubber-banding back to now where it kind of matters. The nudge for all this came from a (albeit minor) data loss scare, which also happened 3 years ago. The one 3 years back wasn’t too rough thankfully, but still – this needs to be addressed as some of my hardware is really aging out now.

It’s really not a major delay in what I had planned, but does take away from more recreational time that I thought I would have in the fall on top of long work days. No rest for this Viera I suppose.

Y’all have a wonderful Wednesday! Kick lots of tails! Y’all got this!

Nekos

Aikirees drinking a tea sitting next to me, while reading a book glancing at her with the caption 'Monday Morning Weekend Recap' off to the left.

I could have sworn I talked a bit more last week – was it really that much of a blur!?

Well aside from that, the weekend was a mix of hazy resting, and working on smaller tasks. Saturday I did tinker with the server a bit, and finally cleaned up the trains to get them moving again. Forgotten how much I enjoy them rolling around their circuits. Dinner’s movie was another Studio Ghibli movie: The Cat Came Back, and that was great.

In between that and just usual weekend tasks, playing a game Sirena recommended ‘OmOneko‘ on Steam – well started it over the span of the previous week, but got into it a lot more over the weekend. I’ve gotten engrossed into the story paths and the universe it has built, and mostly overall been really enjoying it.

Just wish I did get a smidgen more sleep, but that’s par for the course for me I suppose. A little Final Fantasy XIV in to take care of some loose ends before reset, and we’re now just in the last couple of weeks before Patch 7.3 kicks it up again. Like it’s been, might be quiet here or more blogs like these, it just depends.

In either/any case, y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Kick so much tails! Y’all got this!

Quiet Evening

Aikirees and I leaning against a chalkboard with 'Blog Stuffs' written on it.

I know it’s only been two weeks, but it really has felt like forever upon landing home last night, taking care of the usual evening routines and then just… nothing but relaxing. With the borked system fixed (mostly, to a point of content), and the other one humming away, it was just a rather nice relaxing evening of just Horizon II: Forbidden West and catching up on some videos.

Aloy riding a mechanical boar in the desert with some city ruins in the background.

It was also a double-edged feeling, but the ‘sad’ part of said feeling never necessarily lasts due to lack of time to perceive it or just it fading fairly soon after it appears. It might have just been a combination of letting it be ‘held’ up with everything always moving so fast, or thinking about Vladimir again after listening to some nostalgic songs. It happens, and it’s fine for the most part.

Back at the usual today though, but I might, might, just be able to have a similar evening stretch out for an afternoon Saturday right now as I don’t think there’s anything on the Horizon (not meant to be a pun) that needs to be addressed. Possibly some more server work, as I’ve neglected adding more goodies to that for a bit now, or perhaps looking over the poor trains again. Guess I’ll know more as the week unfolds. I know there are bigger projects looming ahead, but maybe taking a bit of downtime voluntarily would be good.

Kick some tails today y’all! Have a wonderful one!