This actually might be the first full week I don’t adventure around Eorzea – like at all. We all might do the bare minimum of weekly tasks over the weekend, but for the most part I’ve been either pre-planning this leg of the project for Saturday or playing Horizon II: Forbidden West, which is now reaching the 100th hour at ~65% complete. This game is huge to say the least, but it’s been really good and a lot of fun to be going through.
Hopefully it all goes (relatively) well with this part of the project, then it should give me at least a few weeks to rest up before the next phase, and that one is a doozy.
While I’d have liked to have a bit more active week here, this past weekend was just sideways progress all around. Parts of it were nice and relaxing, but a lot of it was trial and error with an emphasis on error. With the temperatures being a lot lower right now it’ll be good to do some more outside work this weekend, so probably a quieter week until I can get settled back further into a weekend routine.
This’ll happen as once this project is all paced out and done with, that will really help things, but it’s just a big undertaking. Aside from that, more Fallout Season 2 progress and a bit of the usual weekly routines.
Y’all stay warm, out of the weather, enjoy a nice roaring fireplace with a hot drink, and kick tails!
Aside from all the RL bonkerness and adventuring through Eorzea, been very slowly chipping away at a couple of other games in the meanwhile. I’m pretty sure both have been mentioned, which would be Sea of Stars and Horizon: Forbidden West. Sea of Stars is on the (almost) 3rd playthrough while debating if I want to go into the expansion story right thereafter – it’s a compelling idea since this is such a wonderful game to begin with. The other thought is to give it a little break and move on to another in the backlog for a spell and then return.
Horizon: Forbidden West has been one I’ve been slowly making progress on since around April of last year. Once Horizon: Zero Dawn was completed, I jumped right into this one the next day practically. The amusing thing is I’ve explored and side-quested so much that now approaching 100 hours with the base game of ~55% complete and max level at that. The world in this one is HUGE compared to the first one, but every little nook and cranny of it is worth exploring, and a lot of hidden little spots placed perfectly too. The story itself is pretty good so far, as since I’m only about halfway through, I know there’s still a lot to tackle.
Moar Spaaaaaaceee~!
During the holidays, I did dabble a little bit back into No Man’s Sky on PS5 this time. I actually played it right when it came out for a long while, and then shelved it as they continued to add goodies and content. So fast forward to now and I gave it a go again to much my surprise as to how much different (for the better) the game has gotten! I’m still fairly not-great at it, but it just plays and feels/looks so much better than it did back then! I’ll probably get more back into this once other backlogged games have been tackled, I wanna see if I can get a bunny helmet too (or at least one can hope!)
There is, of course, the various journeys and adventures that continue in Final Fantasy XIV, and will for some time assuming nothing awry happens. However, it’s good to take a breather from that and take a look at another world/story to break it up every now and then.
Almost the weekend y’all! Have fun in whatever world(s) y’all are currently adventuring through!
Finally got some home office work in, and it felt good. This week has some scheduled appointments, but it should be fine once it’s all done. One of them being an eye appointment that is well overdue as it’s getting a bit difficult to see accurately.
It really wasn’t a hugely eventful weekend for once, but that’s going to get back to it either this coming weekend and/or the following one: there’s only so many more cooler weekends that I’ll have access to before it starts to get warmer again. The bigger part of this project will have to be planned out and ideally done before April, otherwise it might be postponed again until 2027 – this project really needs to end this year as it’s been 9 years in the planning. Once it is done though, even if it’s the biggest/only project of the year, it will conclude the first decade’s planned projects; that alone will feel line a great milestone.
Aiki, Lizz, Laureine, and I having completed all of Arcadion late last week (and into the early hours of the weekend), it’s mostly just back to the usual routines until 7.5. That’s not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing and if we did address the eternal 9002 issues (I am really hoping) then we can also get back to working on more side & fun tasks like decorations and a certain submarine that’s been sitting in the workshop for I think a year or so now.
The Leporines, meanwhile, are having a far more interesting and adventuring time while attempting to finish up a lot of side-quests within A Realm Reborn before the two of them move on to beginning Heavensward together. They still have a bit of a ways to go in that regards – primarily to a certain Mail Moogle – but it’ll get done eventually. However, there was a pause to all that over the weekend for them to finally tie the knot and make it official (to the surprise of Reinylla that she accepted to begin with!)
One of these days we’ll actually do the new Monster Hunter trial and the class quests, but I think we’re going to do that closer or well into the 7.5 lull. Beastmaster we are still curious about as well, especially Aikirees coming from her first live in Final Fantasy XI.
Technical-stuffs-wise, some audio work and system work. My oldest PC has mysteriously lost some RAM, which seems to be the fault of the sockets themselves; so that’s going to be another Saturday afternoon to go and aggressively try and fix. Worse case I can’t due to age, but it’s worth a shot. Trains still idling, but that I’ll just plan for another weekend to fix and get all moving again.
That’s all for this morning, y’all have a wonderful Monday and kick tails! Y’all got this!
The cousins went and crushed the final tier of the Archadion last night, and it was excellent. This was a solid tier as all four battles didn’t feel oddly harder than the other. It tends (at least to me and my experience) that the 3rd one of all tiers tends to be the ‘cursed’ one which is either more difficult for some reason, or just always rough to get through. I’d rank Arcadion as a whole probably 2nd or 3rd favorite set thus so far – I mean, nothing is ever going to top Alpha and Omega. Battle-wise, I’d say and easy 1st, but for story, 2nd or 3rd. Give them a go if y’all haven’t the whole tier (overall) will not disappoint.
Aside from that, been dealing with a whole lot of perpetual disconnects, which has been a battle in itself. I know the onslaught of DDoSes has probably had SquareEnix put up some sort of defenses, which is great, but I think it might be affecting players just trying to play the game. Trying something out as a recommendation, so we’ll see if that helps (really hoping). Some more net upgrades are happening next week, so we’re hoping that helps a bit too. It has(had?) gotten to the point where I was just going to hang it up and go back to Horizon: Forbidden West full time for a while.
I mean… just look how gorgeous this is.
Which isn’t to say I’m still chipping away at the titantular game and its story. Hitting the 90th hour now at max level with only 55% of the base-game done so far. It’s been a grand time there for certain. This weekend will be a lot less work-intensive so I can rest, but still more office at home things to do ideally with more Fallout Season 2 as well so should be good.
Y’all have a Happy Friday and kick tails this weekend!
This week really started off turbulent, and the incline is still slanting a bit upwards even now at midweek. Was hoping for more posts and updates this week, but between working on something else and the whirlwind of tasks that has come through, it just didn’t work out.
Even aiming for the Cousins to start Arcadion last night didn’t work out as starting the evening later than usual and some connection issues, that has gotten delayed. I think what we’ll do is just plan for the back-end of this week and just go for broke to at least start them. That way if it goes into the weekend it won’t feel like such a daunting task. One of my PC’s seems to have lost the ability to notice a bit of RAM, so going to investigate as to why. The system is approaching 20 years old, so if it’s a hardware failure, then that’s okay but not great.
As from the post last week ‘What was to be Done,’ that marked the end of EOCA proper, but not the end of the FC itself. Kind of sort of been attempting to pick up some of the pieces left in the wake of the dissolving, but it’s taking more time than I’d have liked. It is getting there and is shaping up, but might need a bit more work. I needed to grief as it was a huge part of my Erozea life, and something I’ll never forget. As for the story about EOCA, well that’s probably going to be pushed into the lull between 7.55 and 8.0.
I think this weekend will be a lot quieter in terms of projects that require legwork, as I am still sore and tired from last weekend’s big project. Even if I were to get the materials ready for the next phase of the garage project, I’d put it off another week or so to take care of much needed other little things.
Well got a few additional posts done this week, which is good to get some momentum back, but still a far cry from the five I was able to accomplish before everything went off the rails.
Weekend outlook is another project that ideally will only take a hour or so depending, which then gives me the rest of the time to start to catch up in the home office. That in itself is becoming a little bit dire of a situation, let alone the poor trains that have been sitting for a few months now, and that’s really not good for them.
Hopefully soon the momentum will be back into full swing and I can start to bring about some really backlogged items here. I think Fallout will start tomorrow evening as well (assuming season 2 is out now?)
So there are holiday photos and posts incoming, but I’m still in the midst of trying to catch up on projects that have been weaved in where I can. Overall it’s been a really nice holiday and New Years, albeit incredibly busy – far more than years prior.
Finished season 5 of Strange Things, and cried something fierce: both because I’ve been watching it since it first came out when I moved to Florida and it was just a really good ending. Off to Season 2 of Fallout this coming weekend after another big project Saturday. Once these projects are all smoothed back out, then daily posts will return and I’ve missed them dearly.
Might be a really quiet week overall, but soon (if so) that should change.
Y’all have a wonderful first full week of 2026! Kick tails!
Happy Monday y’all! The weekend was good overall, but just felt.. sped up? Like, almost everything that was planned on getting done, did get done, but in such a turnkey it didn’t feel good. As predicted as well, the new Arcadian matches are delayed probably for another week with it all.
Going into the holiday weeks, it’s looking pretty good. I have a couple of items to get this evening to finish it all up, and then I can just worry about finishing up work before the holidays. What’s a little bit annoying is the fact that both Christmas and New Years are on Thursdays, the office is pulling a technicality and not closing on either Friday – for the last seven years I’ve been trying my darndest to explain the importance of R&R, but it’s becoming an over exhaustive fleeting battle at this point.
Holiday Duuuuuucks! From Placid Plastic Duck Simulator.
Sans the new Arcadian, we did do the new Starlight festive event, and place some ‘classic’ festive music on at HQ, but right now is just trying to keep up with weeklies/dailies and the daily DDoS attacks, for in which I cannot understand how/why these are so severe for a game this big. Like… even World of Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King I can’t remember ever being knocked off due to such a thing. Guild Wars 1 or 2 neither had this, and the other handful of online games from both Blizzard and elsewhere in the past I just can’t recall this ever happening. Supposedly it did in WoW early on, but was squelched pretty quickly.
Just… *sigh* maybe we’ll hear something eventually explaining the situation. Would at least help explain why it’s so bad. I guess just in the meantime it’s one more thing I need to schedule into the evening routines until it finally ends. It makes me wonder how 8.0 and beyond will go with this. Getting kicked off only to come back to a 3K+ queue due to one of these is not going to make for an enjoyable time…
I know, shouldn’t end on a downer, just something that’s been growing into a major bother with everything else happening. It’ll be a good and fun week ahead, and I hope y’all have a wonderful one as well! Kick lots of tails and lots of love.
The last full week of the year is upon us. The weekend was productive, and non-breaking of things; it didn’t go as planned per se however. The original plan was to just rest up a smidgen and get a little bit more 7.4 preparations in, but what happened instead was more catching up on tasks in the home office and holiday planning. So, good things still, but the catch-up is very real still. Lacking a solid day of writing isn’t helping things here either.
Next weekend is my big holiday one before the actual holiday, and with 7.4 coming out on Tuesday, will have to address some things prior that have come up. I got thrown a fairly odd curve-ball in relation to work that I’m still having to consider as I suspect it’s going to come up before the end of the year (or the department review) which could affect the future of just about everything I do. Not that’s necessarily supposed to sound ominous by any means, but there’s some weight to this decision making that echoes my first tenure in this industry, and was ultimately one of the biggest reasons I left initially.
Best not to dwell all that much on it right now, however – I’ve got a lot more experience and journeys under the ears at this point, so the outcome shouldn’t be the same again. Regardless of that, let’s make the last full week before the holidays and end of the year be stellar.
Last week went off the rails again, and still perpetually behind on planning practically anything for the foreseeable future. However, this past weekend was nice; the folks visiting Saturday evening – it was shorter than usual but nice nonetheless. The next time I’ll see them is Christmas and then New Years right thereafter.
Aside from the visit – most of the weekend was in a perpetual state of chasing catch-ups and not succeeding as well as needed. In the process, breaking another Linux system (albeit temporarily) once again. As much as I like Mint, the sheer amount of research required to do some of the more technical things is incredibly exhausting sometimes. I’ve been leaving myself a lot of text documents on the NAS though for when/if I need to reference these hurdles again in the future.
Last full week before Patch 7.4, and we’re basically ready for it, but just concerned with the amount of work hours how the first week is going to go. Ideally we’ll finish the MSQ the night it comes out and then plan getting to the new Arcadion (it’s going to conflict with the traditional holiday Rum Cakes baking). I know we have an ample amount of time to do these until 7.5, and this is the last tier of tomestones until 8.0, but would rather see the story sooner than later to avoid any unintentional spoilers.
Once I stop have self-inflicted technical issues (getting there!), planning out more story-driven posts will come back once again, and I am so looking forward to it.
Y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Kick some tails!
I hadn’t been planning on being absent for this long. It’s been a bit too overwhelming, even for me. The major issues that I was discussing back in August got addressed: new roof, all of the Windows 10 to 11 or Linux has been dealt with too. The bigger problem was hitting 6 days a week of work to deal with a large project that wasn’t planned or laid out well enough. This on its own caused a nasty bottleneck for everything else, for in which now we’re dealing with that fallout. By the end of this year, either this will be addressed fully or I’m arbitrarily taking back my personal time. I didn’t return to this industry for a 3rd time to do what I did in the 1st tenure that caused me to leave in the first place.
That being said, and with all of that happening, I did finish Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Hazbin Hotel Season 2, and all of Helluva Boss. These were all great seasons, and I do recommend them. Wicked Part 1 was superb of a watch too. The audio server project is still making additional progress by the week, and my skills using Linux have increased (even with breaking a couple of systems in the process – oops). So it’s not all been a whirlwind of insanity, but I do miss sleep. Office got a nice small overhaul as well when the new systems went in, and it’s a lot more cozy in there too.
I’d like to get back to posting daily here, and I got enough to do so, but I still haven’t had enough time to sit down and plan getting back into that just yet. The little blurbs I was doing are probably manageable right now, but I need a few hours over a weekend to sort everything else out.
Eorzea-wise. I just announced the dissolution of EOCA’s discord at the end of the year. It’s a really somber feeling, but it’s way overdue. The FC will continue onwards, but my retirement of doing cartography for Final Fantasy XIV is all but done. The fact that I was part of the community for so long and with so many warm regards was such a honor and a privilege. It would never have lasted as long without so many wonderful folks and friends who supported me through it all. One of these moons, I’ll finish up the story about EOCA, but that rough draft is pretty… rough to say the least, and some things have changed since then.
Aside from that, barely keeping it together with such a loss of personal time. Aikirees and I are hanging in there, as are the cousins but it’s really been dialed back (Miss Lizz is happy about the extra nap time, however). Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get back to taking care of more side things as opposed to just weekly tasks. Doing some of those weekly tasks is getting harder as it feels the community in certain parts is feeling far more cold than it ever has, even so now looking back on almost 7 years of playing.
This will be fully completed by 2030.
Let’s see, Horizon: Forbidden West is still moving along as well, 50% completion according to the in-game statistics, with 70 hours invested. I’ve been having a blast but certainly taking it really slowly. Started Sea of Stars again on PS5 as well – it’s just too good and definitely a recommend for a great story RPG with minimal grinding. That might be it for this long post for now; still have lots to thimble through and organize here. The Vieras’ adventures still continue in the background with Reinylla slowly approaching Heavensward now.
I’ll wrap it up there before I ramble on forever. Y’all have a really wonderful Monday and week ahead. Only 31 days left of the year now, let’s make them absolutely stellar!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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!
