Sidetrek: Bittersweet Limbo

Today seems to mark the end of something and the beginning of another.

(And I don't even celebrate the American 4th of July. :) )

Why's this? Well, one of the bigger projects that I was supervising at work is finally over. The filming wrapped up yesterday, with no major hitches, to everyone's relief. I admit to not being completely happy, because of a minor nitpick with my own developed scoring system - leading to a bit of a surprise 'win' for one team. Had I the option to do it over again, I would tweak my scoring system just a lil. But anyway, what's over is over, bittersweet as it is.

And the same bittersweet flavour extends to my gaming. For the past two days, I have been hoping to achieve placing in a contest I found on the Kingdom of Loathing forum boards. Which is to score a 2-day ascension with the lowest possible amount of banked skills. My character was in really good position to snatch 1st Place had I managed it, because of my current ascension number (was 11, now 12 this run), I see on the boards others have managed it at 13.

For the past two days, I have been indulging in strategic planning nearly bordering on OCD. :) What I should pull from Hagnk's, what food and drink I should be using, etc, to attempt an AT ascension on double moxie days. I even splurged a ton of meat on buying hi meins that I really could barely afford, and would normally never dream of using to boost my adventures.

*sighs* So close yet so far.

I end the second day and my chances of placement with a self-inflicted blooper.

On the sour grapes side of things, I think that even had I not screwed up, I wouldn't have enough turns to achieve this. I was at 7 adventures remaining, and my only option was to drink for more adventures. I -could- have used the superhuman cocktailcrafting skill to make up a 3 drunkeness drink, which would have added ~6 adventures, one turn used up to make the drink, gives a total of 12 adventures.

12 adventures in which to go through the lair and defeat the Naughty Sorceress. Tomorrow I will have to try and see if I can get through the hedge maze and the 6 adventure tower and defeat her in 12 turns...I have this feeling that I wouldn't be able to because I don't have enough stat gains yet. My muscle is sitting at 66, my mysticality 63, and the Castle was not being super-cooperative in my stat gain attempts, so I wouldn't have gotten 70 in all stats and defeat her in 12 turns anyhow.

On the bright side, I think I am very well set up for 3 day ascension now. It's July, I bought another Mr A and the item of the month, which is VERY nifty to me because it regens mana. And I prefer softcore ascension to hardcore anyhow. Cos the 'intense planning' necessity gets me down, I get all competitive and worried. And I was right, with two Mr A's, you can progress and skip over a lot of the low level stuff and jump ahead in days much more easily. I don't think 3 will have the same effect, because you still need one slot for other stuff, but 2 is good. Very good. Frankly the only thing that impeded this 2-day attempt is imo, not having Antiphon. The stat gain from that would probably have been enough.

Anyway, all this is presently moot, because I thought to 'save a turn' cocktailcrafting and use a drink in my inventory instead. Not being super-familiar with the drinks, and dumbly forgetting to check the wiki for the drunkeness, I drank a 4 drunk drink instead of a 3 drunk one. Which heaved me over the limit and now I have 19 adventures, and am totally sodden.

Whoops. :/

Bye-bye 2 day ascension. Bye-bye all prospects of winning a 2 million meat pot.

I blame /c games. :P I've been hanging out for the past week in that channel while KoLing and lurking to figure out the whole game/contest aspect. It's been kinda fun actually, put me back in the nostalgic frame of mind of RoD and its trivia quests - though they've developed a whole other kind of culture of contests and giveaways.

Oh, and the one difference is that I'm surrounded by a whole bevyful of Spades and Diamonds, as oppposed to Heart-type people. Translating the KoL jargon, this means I have a whole bunch of Bartle Explorer and Achiever types as more experienced 'rivals' as opposed to the majority of RoD guildies who are Socializers.

This makes the whole 'breaking in' aspect pretty durned difficult. I can't expect to sweep the field in victory like how it went in RoD. But it was pretty fun to try participating a lil in some trivia games and also shamelessly take advantage of any Anti-Raffles coming my way - aka store giveaways at low low prices, plus a lottery chance at winning something else.

As luck would have it, some gal was celebrating her birthday during these two days, and I managed to win 3 Retenez Herb Pates. Which isn't too shabby. Cos the top prizes were stuff like Mr A.s, but come now, let's be content with what I got. :)

*sighs* Anyhow, it's still a bit bittersweet. I'm used to aiming for the moon, with this romantic notion that I'll achieve it somehow with all the hope and planning I'm doing. Kinda movie-esque, in a way. Amazingly I get it, more often than not, sometimes Fate just falls that way.

(Like when I participated in the one contest in /c games that was open for hardcore/ronin, just thinking that I'd be the one to win the lottery, and I did...)

But sometimes I don't. I'm not devastated by any means, just naturally a little disappointed. But today has been a bunch of those teensy weeny mild 'let-downs' which have added up to being a moderate 'not really my day, maybe I should just sleep it off and start tomorrow anew' kind of feeling.

On the optimistic side, at least I got to try out Accordion Thief. It's pretty fun, actually, having all these buffs available. And the wizard's hat, which saves me all the monstrous effort of drinking soda water. I HATE soda water. Call me spoiled, but I grew up on magical mystery juice. I despise its cost to mana ratio. At least at lvl 9, the AT can sneak in and buy MMJ. I think I might do a few AT runs again, at an easier pace (3-6 days?), to collect some of these buffs.

It was fun attempting to 'win.' But unless I want another repeat of RoD, I need to recognize it just as that, an 'attempt' to win. Not a necessity. Not an entitlement. Not an obsession. Easy come, easy go. Plenty of other contests, in good time as I get more skilled and experienced. I was biting off more than I could chew as a newbie. *shrugs*

Now I should return back to my single-player insularity for a while and start collecting this whole new world of AT buffs (and combat initiative boosting skills), so that I'm less reliant on getting out of Ronin and needing Testudinata the buffbot to help me out. Not to mention start farming the Icy Peak a little to make up for the ~100-200k meat I blew on this attempt. :)

Couple more mild 'setbacks' or road bumps, rather. Urban Dead. Have been spending two days wandering aimlessly, looking for survivors to prey on. None to be found. Have developed enough in sophistication that I don't wanna just eat zombies, but not enough to be able to launch my own attack and organize any feral z's to come help me yet. Ended up ending my turn at a revive point, and some weirdo revived me. Oh well. So I tried to search up some good stuff to help my future zombie survival, but the place I am in has been too ransacked to find anything good. Well, duh, I was heading toward zombie headquarters in the hope of finding allies. Long story short, it's been a little aimless, with no progress in sight. Just gotta wait for another zed to kill me (give him some xp) and go hunting again. Tomorrow.

My career path. Sheesh. I have heard no news. Whatsoever. I really don't like being in Limbo. And when it's an internal application, rather than some cold-calling envelope dropped on your desk, I would have thought you would at least have the civility to mention -something- in passing, right? Whether yea, or nay, don't hold out hope or juuus maybe? But what do I know anything about HR practices, hmm? *snorts*

My decision about my laptop. It looks more and more like I may as well just take the pragmatic option. I'll have to go back to Sim Lim and look at it again, and if it doesn't induce absolute horror in me, I'll settle for the mid-range system. Regardless of whether I get the promo or no. I can always spend celebration money on something else.

Because after a few day's consideration, I think I want to upgrade my desktop too. I'd like a better graphics card, and I might switch the monitor (Mom bought a new one, super-big sized, and it's attached to a computer that dates back to the Stone Ages, ie. doesn't need it) and up my RAM to 2 gig. See, I bumped CoX up to High and Very High Quality graphics to take screenies and it actually looks very sweet, just that my current system would totally choke on it. I'll do this as a belated birthday present assuming I survive the flight there and back again (I'm always pretty fatalistic about flights.)

I want to catch up on comics before my trip. Means today I should really take note of all the comics I want/need, and go get 'em on Wednesday. I've been putting off ordering Nodwick and PS238, it looks like I may as well go over -there- and order them, saving myself some shipping money.

My previous trip report and sharing session is still in fucking Limbo. I can't say I'm depressed over this because I'd been too busy and exhausted to even -think- about writing one. Time's a tickin' and I think I better try and write it today. *sighs*

Yea. Summary for those not patient to read the whole freaking essay. Life is a series of ups and downs. Currently, I happen to have feet firmly placed in a small hole. It's not giant pit of DOOM sized, but I have to struggle out of this mild downswing and begin to rebuild again.