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Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: "Invincible" by Skillet

Entry tags:

"I will not give in, I've got a reason to fight"

Lyrics:
Target on my back
Lone survivor lasts
They got me in their sights
No surrender no
Trigger fingers go
living the dangerous life
Hey hey hey everyday when I wake
I'm trying to get up
They're knocking me down
(Chewing me up spitting me out)
Hey hey hey when I need to be saved
You're making me strong
You're making me stand
(Never will fall never will end)

Shot like a rocket up into the sky
Nothing can stop me tonight

You make me feel invincible
Earthquake powerful
Just like a tidal wave
You make me brave
You're my titanium
Fight song raising up
Like the roar of victory in a stadium
Who can touch me cause I'm
(I'm made of fire)
Who can stop me tonight
(I'm hard wired)
You make me feel invincible
I feel I feel it
Invincible

Here we go again
I will not give in
I've got a reason to fight
Every day we choose
We might win or lose
This is the dangerous life
Hey hey hey everyday when I wake
They say that I'm gone they say that they've won
(The bell has been rung it's over and done)
Hey hey hey when I need to be saved
They're counting me out but this is my round
(You in my corner look at me now)

You make me feel invincible
Shot like a rocket up into the sky
Not gonna stop
Invincible

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Kent City, MI

Entry tags:

gaming,
minecraft

Minecraft 1.16.5 Begins

I think I finally have a purpose (but not the only purpose) for this blog: detailing my games that I play, with and without mods. Such discussions are too long for Tweets on Twitter without making a long thread of them and it would just be a wall of broken up text on Facebook. Also, Facebook tends to hate links that lead offsite, so that isn't a good platform for sharing stuff in that regard either.

So I finally started up an instance of Minecraft with the 1.16.5 version of the game. The native launcher that the game uses allows for multiple installations, so I have 4 instances that are each running a different version of the game: 1.12.2, 1.15.2, 1.16.4, and now 1.16.5. I spent a couple hours debugging the mod stack to get the game to launch in 1.16.5 and then another few hours actually trying to get a decent world to start on. The first 2 generated worlds were not suitable starts (one of which started me in the middle of an ocean with a clump of driftwood as the nearest "island"). The 3rd one I generated seems to be the most suitable for starting a playthru. I spawned in a village that is up on a ridge, and the surrounding landscape has suitable areas for my builds and decent resources within a reasonable distance.

Mod Stack
I'm running with a total of 99 mods at the moment, with quite a few that are world gen related. I like having a variety of biomes to explore and to get resources from as some resources are restricted to certain biomes. So, here's what I'm running with, broken up into categories:

World Gen:

Biomes O' Plenty: This is my primary biome mod. It adds a wide selection of biomes to explore with varying landscape features such as mangrove trees, tall mountainous crags, fields of fungi, and wide prairies of grass with some scattered trees.
Atmospheric: This one is a new one to my mod stack. It has a few neat wood choices (more decorating and build options) and two primary biome additions, rainforest and dunes, which aren't ones that Biomes O' Plenty.
Quark: This mod covers several categories, so I'll probably list it a few times, but detail what it adds for that category. For world gen, Quark adds quite a bit to the underground, including large dungeons, glowing cave crystals, speleothems (spikes of stone from both the floors and ceilings), underground biomes, and a few cavern modifications. For the above ground areas, faerie rings (ring of flowers with goodies buried at the center) and colored blossoming trees have been added. The Nether gets spires of obsidian added, some of which have goodies embedded in them. Similar spires are also added to the End as well, only without goodies in them. Also adds a few new stone types that generate underground in certain biomes (more decor/build options). Quark also adds some variants to the passive animals (chickens, cows, sheep, pigs).
YUNG's Better Caves: This mod adjusts how the caverns are generated in both the Overworld and the Nether. The Overworld gets some new "bottom of the world" features such as flooded caverns, underground seas of water and lava, and flat bedrock. The flat bedrock is also applied to the Nether.
YUNG's Better Mineshafts: This mod revamps how the mineshafts generate and adds new sections to them, such as abandoned work stations and vertical shafts (good locations for elevators).
Geolosys: Short for Geological Systems, this mod revamps how the ore generates in the world. Instead of being lots of tiny pockets of ore everywhere, ore is condensed to smaller locations and samples appear on the surface (and sometimes inside caverns) to indicate what ore is in the immediate area. You'll have to prospect to figure out where the ore exactly is, however. I like it because it adds a bit more to world exploration and takes the frustration out of figuring out where to get enough of certain resources. A little bit of a learning curve at this time because the ingame manual is incomplete and the fact that the ores use the real world names such as Azurite and Limonite (deep copper and deep iron, respectively).
Upstream: Revamps how the game's rivers generate and results in less frustrating water travel. The default Minecraft river generation generates far too many narrow and/or water-less river segments, which I usually end up dredging and refilling with water. This should reduce my workload of terraforming rivers for travel quite a bit.
Blue Power: adds volcanos (lots of basalt), limestone, and marble to the world.
Create: Adds several stone types underground as well (more decor/build options).
Thermal Foundation: Adds a few minerals to the underground such as Apatite (fertilizer ingredient) and sulfur.
Upgrade Aquatic: Adds new aquatic features such as plants and fish (also some fish will eat other fish).
Charm: Adds some variants to the passive animals (sheep, cows, squid, etc.), allows villages to generate in more biomes, adjusts how mineshafts generate.
Buzzier Bees: Revamps how the bees work and adds new related resources.
Productive Bees: Adds new beehives and bee species to the world. Also allows for gathering of mob drops and other resources in Peaceful mode.
Fun Ores: Allows for gathering of mob drops in Peaceful mode. Adds mob related ores underground that can be mined to gather resources related to specific mods, such as Enderman and Creepers.
Resynth: Adds a plant-based way to gather various resources, including mob drops and ores.
TerraAqueous: Adds fruit trees, stone/stick landscape decorations (can be harvested for resources), and flowers (dye sources).
Botania: A nature-based magic mod that adds flowers to the world which can be used for dyes.

Decoration and Construction Options:

Advanced Chimneys: Add functional chimneys for routing smoke and particulates. Also makes burning devices such as furnaces emit smoke when running.
Engineer's Decor: Adds thematic engineering decor and construction options. Goes well with Immersive Engineering.
Platforms: Adds wooden and steel platforms for making catwalks and other platforms/walkways
Macaw's Bridges: Adds several types of bridges, including ones with minecart tracks integrated into them.
Macaw's Roofs: Adds new roofing options, including skylights that can be opened.
Macaw's Doors: Adds new door options.
Macaw's Windows: Adds new window options, some of which can be opened.
Macaw's Trapdoors: Adds new trapdoor options.
Macaw's Furniture: Adds new furniture options, some of which are functional storage (similar to chests).
Macaw's Paintings: Adds new painting options.
Storage Drawers: Provides compact storage which can be upgraded. Compacting drawers that can handle resources that have multiple tiers (ie nuggets that can make ingots which can make blocks).
Framed Compacting Drawers: Allows you to make compacting drawers with whatever base, drawer, and trim options you want. It's addon for Storage Drawers.
Inspirations: Adds all sorts of decoration options. I picked it up mainly for the feature of placing carpet tiles on stairs and having them fit the stairs.
Iron Chests: Upgradeable storage chests.
Multibeds: Customizable beds, with blankets and pillows.
Comforts: Adds sleeping bags (function as beds, but do not change your respawn location) and hammocks (advances time to night).
Chisel & Bits: Allows you to turn a single block into 4096 bits which can then be used to make whatever you want, such as signs, embosses, fences, filigrees, etc. Also supports hacking up liquid sources in a similar manner. Will work with practically any block added by any mod.
Immersive Posts: Adds post and fence options for Immersive Engineering.

Tech Mods:

Immersive Engineering: A steampunk themed mod that features dynamically created, drooping electrical wires. Machinery is typically made of multi-block structures that are built in the world and hit with a hammer to form the completed machine. This is the baseline tech mod that I prefer to work with.
Thermal Expansion: A series of single-block machines that can be upgraded for various functions. Allows for compact machine areas. I consider this to be a mid-tier tech mod for my purposes.
Transport: A modular minecart and boat mod. Provides base minecart and boat hulls that can be configured with various modules for functions. Also, adds switches/junctions for the minecart tracks. This is what I'm using as a replacement for Railcraft. I still need a signaling mod, though.
Blue Power: Adds project tables, alloy furnaces, and colored redstone lamps.
More Red: Adds redstone logic gates.
Engineer's Tools: Starter tools for getting started with Immersive Engineering.
Thermal Locomotion: Adds a couple of specialized minecarts and minecart rails (luminous and prisamarine)
Redstone Gauges and Switches: Adds a variety of switches and gauges that either send or receive redstone signals. Great for controlling redstone circuits and automating systems. I like to use the machine switches from this mod for controlling the Immersive Engineering machinery.
Water Strainers: Allows you to passively gather materials and fish from water sources. I use this to gather sand for projects.
Create: Kinetic-powered machinery mod. Allows for machinery to be driven by windmills and waterwheels via shafts and gearboxes. I'm using this for the ability to make functional elevators for accessing mineshafts/caverns. If you know what you're doing, you can make all sorts of automated systems and rotation-moved structures.
Advanced Hooks Launchers: Grappling hooks (think Legend of Zelda).
Advanced Finders: Tools for locating ores and other resources.
Thermal Innovation: Electrically-powered tools.

Quality of Life Mods:

Client Tweaks: Adds a few inventory and menu features.
Quark: Adds some accessibility features.
Xaero's Map & Minimap: Allows you to keep track of where you are and allows the setting of waypoints so you can return to specific places later. Supports teleporting to set waypoints and allows for unique sets of waypoints. I use this feature to keep my waypoints for ores/resources from cluttering my list of points of interest waypoints.
Swing Through Grass: Allows you to attack mobs without destroying the plants that decorate the landscape (and take durability off your sword).
The One Probe: Allows you to identify blocks/items while looking at them. Also shows health of mobs, power stored in machinery, etc.
Thermal Cultivation: Adds an upgradeable watering can for use in farms.
Gilded Armor: Allows you to add gold plating to armor so Piglins in the Nether will not attack you on sight.
Gravestone Mod: Sets a grave where you died so you can recover your items. It will also put them back into the same inventory slots that you had them before death.
Environmentally Friendly Creepers: Allows you to configure Creepers (and other sources of explosions) to prevent holes from being blown into the landscape when they explode.
Extra Boats: Allows you to place chests into boats and carry mobs with you (tamed pets).
Just Enough Items: Mod that allows you to look up recipes and see how/where items are used/crafted. Also, allows you to give yourself items in Cheat Mode without being in Creative Mode.
Rapid Leaf Decay: Makes leaf blocks rapidly disappear once the log blocks they were attached to are removed.
Tree Harvester: While sneaking and breaking the bottom log of a tree with an axe, you will harvest the whole tree.
Shut Up Experimental Settings: Removes the prompt when loading a world with modified settings.
Smooth Boot Forge: Fixes the thread allocations for Minecraft when starting up and while playing. This speeds up Minecraft loading and removes the periodic hangs that Minecraft was doing when I was playing.
Waystones: Adds waystones to the world for quick-traveling. Also allows you to make your own.
Waystones 2 Waypoints: Automatically adds waypoints to the map when you activate waystones.
Polymorph: Allows you to specify the output of a recipe when there are conflicting recipes. Confirmed to work in crafting tables and furnaces.
Mouse Tweaks: Adds some automation for transferring items between inventories and the hotbar.
Quark: Allows swapping of the hotbar from the 3 lines of the player's inventory. Whole rows are swapped. Double doors are opened together when one of the doors is opened. Many other QoL features are included, but these are the highlights.
Dynamic Surroundings: Adds various visual and audio effects to the game. Fireflies appear around plants, auroras appear in the sky at night in mountainous regions, waterfalls have sound and emit particles which create splashes on water surfaces, rain drops create rings on water when it rains, etc.
Cycle Paintings: With a painting held in your hand, you can cycle through various paintings without having to take one down and replace it constantly to get the one you want (and the game picks a random one each time).
Klee Slabs: Makes it possible to remove half of a double-slab block without having to remove the entire block to do so.

Where I'm at now
I've explored a good chunk of the surrounding area around the village I spawned in and I have selected a spot on the coast to the south of the village for where I want to start building my base of operations. It's a grove biome with tall dark oak and spruce trees scattered about. The waters off the coast are part of a bayou biome and there are quite a few limonite deposits scattered around. This means that the iron deposits are underneath all of the clay and mud that lines the bottom of the water, so I shouldn't have too much trouble gathering that ore later.

I've set a few waypoints for various ores that I wish to harvest later and plotted out where I want to run a tunnel system to connect to the nearby village. I need to bore a shaft into the nearby cliff to reach one of the nearby cavern systems. From there, I can build a short connector tunnel to reach the engineering shop that is in the village. I'll have to build stairs and stair towers to help connect the village together as it goes across the ridge.

I also have plans to build some minecart railways through the hillside for ease of access across it, and a boat dock so I can start sailing across the bayou to places. I'll have to find a use for all of the lily pads I'm going to be coming across. Bumping into them with a boat breaks them off. Oh, I suppose I could repurpose them into walkways since they do support me running across them! That's still a lot of lily pads, though! I'll figure it out eventually.

Also, with as much space as I have on the cliff face at my base site, I will probably look into mounting the Create windmills and stuff onto it for powering devices and machinery. On my 1.16.4 instance, I was looking into what I need to make some of the starter machinery to process plates and such with Create so I could move onto Immersive Engineering devices and beyond. I've got the basics down for the Immersive Engineering tech tree from the last few years of playing with that mod, so I'm looking forward to learning how to work with Create's machinery. Sure, it will take up more space, but it looks cool while it works.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Kent City, Michigan

Entry tags:

Name Change Thoughts

In light of recent events in both my life and my friends’ lives, I’m thinking of changing my name. I’ve gotten attached to the name of Krys Emlyn. This is not something I’m thinking of doing on a whim. I’ve spent the last few months thinking about it, and seeing a friend’s child getting their name legally changed has rekindled the thoughts about doing so for myself.

The name of Krys Emlyn was once simply just a character name for a role-playing game years ago, but I really like the sound of it when I’ve had people speak it. One part of the name changing process that I have been getting hung up on is which of the 3 parts of my name would get replaced. Originally, I was thinking of replacing my actual first and last names with Krys Emlyn and then replacing my middle name with my birth first name. After all, some people go by their middle name as their first name.

Then, I realized that would cause some issues in regards to legally showing I’m still part of my parents’ family for things such as insurance policies. So, I’m now considering just replacing my first and middle names with Krys Emlyn. I also considered hyphenating my last name to be Emlyn-(current last name), but that just looked odd to me.

The final hang up with changing my name is I’m afraid of upsetting my dad with the change. The naming conventions from my dad’s side of the family has been that the middle name of the boys is the first name of their father. I would effectively be breaking this tradition, if I change my name. (I’m also not planning to have kids with my own DNA being involved for various medical reasons, namely damaged genes). I may wait until I move out first before going through with this so I can’t be disowned and thrown out of the house that I currently live in with my parents.

The only legal hurdles I’m aware of is finding a judge that will allow me to actually change my name and coming up with the roughly $300 in filing fees to actually do it. The state of Michigan is not as welcoming as Washington State when it comes to certain things.

(For those wondering how to pronounce the first name I want to go by, it sounds the same as saying Chris. I’m just abusing English spelling/pronunciation rules. K = Ch and Y is occasionally used in place of an I per English spelling/pronunciation rules. The other name sounds exactly as it looks.)

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Kent City, Michigan
Current Music: iTunes

Entry tags:

It's been a year

It's been over a year since I've posted here and I feel like posting stuff again, even if it is just thoughts on games and such.
Since Feburary 2017, it's been an interesting period of time for me:

- I was laid off from my job at MKE Steel Detailing Services in Seattle, WA.
- I was forced to abandon my apartment in Mill Creek in March and move back with my parents on Whidbey Island.
- I found work with FedEx Ground in September as a Package Handler and started on October 9th, 2017.
- I survived the Peak shipping season, which lasts from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day every year.
- Mom officially retired from Boeing at the end of May; June 1st was her first day of being retired.
- As a family, we moved across the country from Clinton, WA to Kent City, MI. I took 3 weeks off from work for the move and to help unpack.
- I started work at the Grand Rapids facility for FedEx Ground in August. I'm currently still employed as a Package Handler with the company.
- I passed the 1 Year mark in October this year and currently working this Peak season.

Michigan is different compared to Washington, particularly summer this year. In Washington, we would have dry summers with little rain. We got soaked by comparison after moving here to Michigan. As the snow started to fall in early November, we still had standing water left from the summer rains scattered all over the place. We're currently in the middle of our 2nd round of snow for the season, which is trying to melt at the moment.

Holiday Plans:
I've made a friend at work and we're making plans to travel to Frankenmuth on the 15th of this month. When I lived in Washington, I would take friends out to Leavenworth for their Tree Lighting Festival. Since I'm not living in Washington anymore, I'm thinking of starting a new tradition of visiting Frankenmuth instead. If I enjoy my visit to Frankenmuth this year, I will probably make a yearly trip out of it starting next year.

Due to conflicting schedules between me and my sister (who lives in Clinton, Michigan), I'll be celebrating my birthday early in the morning on December 23rd. My sister, her fiance, and my nephew will be arriving at 10:30am so we have time to celebrate my birthday before I have to scurry off to work at 1:15pm that day for my 2pm shift.

At home here, I've already strung up holiday lights in my room across 2 doorway lintels and across 2 curtain rods. No push pins have been used yet.I'll probably resort to those if the lights keep falling off the places that I've draped them. Mom actually smiled when she saw them up in my room. We're still trying to figure out where we are sticking our tree in this house. The house is a bit smaller than we thought it would be, so finding space for stuff has been challenging.

FedEx Ground:
Work is going okay despite some of the struggles we are having with packages at work. I've been working a single trailer by myself for most of this last week and was put into one of our Chicago trailers with a buddy yesterday. We're to have a second person in the trailer when working the Chicago trailers due to volume of packages. Chicago is our closest hub to Grand Rapids. If a package fails to make it to its intended trailer before the trailer is closed and released, then it is forwarded to Chicago and they take care of it from there. Since it is Peak season, we've been starting at 2pm on Mondays and working until 9-10pm to get everything taken care of. We're also working Sundays from 2-6pm until Peak is over. 4 Sundays remain, including this weekend.

Commuting to work isn't too bad here. It takes me 30 minutes to drive to work and I give myself an extra 15 minutes for traffic and to get through security and across the facility to the time clock from my parking spot. It's definitely better than driving for an hour and a half to get to work like I was in Washington because I had to deal with a ferry and give myself enough time to get to work in case I missed a ferry sailing due to traffic volumes.

House Stuff:
We're in the process of downsizing our stuff as we brought quite a bit with us because we didn't have time to sort it all before the move. I've been helping Dad process his boxes of tools, electronics, hobby parts, etc. so we have fewer cardboard boxes cluttering the basement. I've dismantled a few of the boxes that were in my room as well after relocating the contents. I've made a couple of trips to Sparta for dropping off donations to a thrift store over there and I have another trip planned to get rid of another stack of stuff. Most of the stuff I've been relocating has been kitchen stuff from my last apartment. My sister ended up with my dishes, which I had gotten from Mom, so those are staying within the family for the time being.

In my bedroom, I've gotten pictures put up for the first time since they were packed back at the Coupeville house. A couple of picture frames got repurposed to house some of the artwork that I've purchased over the years. Both used to house oil paintings that I made while living in Coupeville and took a summer art class. I also got my bulletin board put up with 4 Command Hooks acting as clips to hold up on the wall. The bulletin board has my 2018 Amy Brown calendar on it and I'm trying to find a metal plate or a white board sheet without a frame to hold my magnets with to place onto the bulletin board.

My bathroom in the basement got slightly remodeled since we've moved in. The ceiling had to be torn out because of mice nesting in the insulation above it. The vanity and mirror have been replaced with a new vanity and a medicine cabinet. The original vanity was a repurposed dresser with a sink set into the top of it by the previous owners (and it wasn't done very well either). The walls and trim have been repainted just before the snow started to fall in earnest. The switches, light fixtures, and the fan have also been replaced. All we are missing is the suspended ceiling tiles to replace the old drywall ceiling. That will have to wait until next year, so we've got Tyvek wrap in place of the ceiling for now. Eventually, the entire basement ceilings will be suspended ceiling tiles, including my bedroom.

Future:
I'm hoping the rest of the year goes smoothly for these next few weeks, particularly at work. Once Peak is over, I'm looking forward to having my weekends back. I'll try to post more here as I do miss blogging like I used to do on LiveJournal (part of why I moved to this site, I don't have to deal with the Russian company that bought LJ and changed their policies)

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Clinton, WA
Current Music: Pandora

Entry tags:

Blizzcon Thoughts on the New Warcraft Expansion

I went over to a friend's place today to watch the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket and one of the announcements was the new expansion for World of Warcraft. The new expansion is: Battle for Azeroth. I'm not totally sold on the idea of Horde versus Alliance as an expansion theme, though. Pandaria taught us that war is not the answer, yet it seems the developers didn't really learn from that experience. But, the scenery of the new zones does have me interested in exploring them. I'm hoping that flight will be enabled in a similar manner to how it has been done for Legion content.

Flight in World of Warcraft
Flight in WoW has gone through changes with the last two expansions. In the past, you got flight for each of your characters by scraping together enough gold to afford the flight training and the flying mounts for each character. Starting with Warlords of Draenor (WoD), flight has become an unlock system via achievements. Each zone has an achievement for the storyline quests in it. Completing these quests completes the achievement and unlocks one of the steps for the meta achievement (Think of logic gates where all the inputs must be true to trigger the output). Once all of the achievements are completed, then the meta achievement is also triggered. Flight in WoD worked in two steps, one meta achievement granted you increased mount speed in the specific content area. The second step required you to have completed the first meta achievement and a few other achievements along the way. This second one grants flight to the entire BattleNet account. Legion used the same system of unlocking flight, but the content was designed around it instead of having the flight unlock shoe-horned in late in the expansion like it was in WoD. In Legion, flight is unlocked more naturally as you progressed through quests.

Upcoming Changes to the Leveling Experience
Starting with Patch 7.3.5, Blizzard is working on fixing the leveling experience for the older content. Instead of having different level ranges of creatures scattered across a zone, the creatures will scale with you to a certain maximum level cap. Some zones will have a range of 10-60, others may be 40-60. This will make the creatures more relevant as you gain levels while questing across a zone. You'll still be able to come back at higher levels and one-shot creatures, but there will be less issues of creatures not giving experience points (XP) while questing.

Another change is how the previous expansions will be handled. Right now, the questing experience going through the expansions looks like this: Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor -> Outland (BC) -> Northrend (WotLK) -> Cataclysm -> Pandaria -> Warlords of Draenor (WoD) -> Legion. With Patch 7.3.5, the questing through expansions will be less linear. BC and WotLK content will both be changed to be for the level 60-80 range. Cataclysm and Pandaria will both be for the level 80-90 range. These changes will make questing more of a player's choice than being forced to do certain content because of level restrictions. The dungeons and quest gear for these expansions will also be adjusted to match the new level ranges.

I'm looking forward to these changes as it will refresh the leveling experience a bit for me in the future. As the questing stands right now, there is a lot of weird back and forth through time as you go through the expansions. Cataclysm changed the world of Azeroth and refreshed the quests to be more current for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Then, you go back in time a long ways when doing quests in Outland. Things get brought closer to the present in Northrend and back even closer to the present in the five Cataclysm zones. With the ability to pick and choose how I progress through expansions, I might skip Outland in the future while questing and go back later for Loremaster reasons.

PvP Changes:
While there wasn't a set milestone for when the new PvP changes will be rolled out, I still want to post a highlight on them. The biggest change is that there won't be a difference between PvE and PvP servers after the new changes roll out. One of the options available by right-clicking on your character's portrait is to disable PvP and it will available to all characters regardless of realm. The only differences between realms will be between normal and role-playing realms at that point. This will be a big change for those that currently have characters on a PvP realm and not wanting to play while on those realms. The realm type won't matter anymore for them. I suspect these PvP changes will go out either with Patch 7.3.5 or when the Battle for Azeroth expansion launches.

Entry tags:

ETS2: Heavy Cargo Pack: Personal Review

I've been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ETS2) a lot more lately since I got the Heavy Cargo Pack DLC from a friend as a gift recently. The DLC has 8 new cargoes on 2 new trailers. The selling point of this DLC isn't so much the new cargoes, it is the rear steering axles on the trailers. The rear axles steer based on the angle of the trailer compared to the fifth wheel on the semi cab. The greater the angle of the trailer, the more the wheels turn to assist with going around corners.

So far, I've been careful with the trailers due to the longer lengths and the heavier cargoes (30+ tons, with a maximum of 61 tons for the switcher locomotive cargo) when going around corners and down hills. A longer braking distance is pretty much mandatory with these trailers. Roundabouts are the only things that are giving me trouble for navigation. The overheight issue from some of the taller cargoes is not an issue that I've had yet. Reading the forum posts at ProMods' and SCS Software's forums, I've learned which routes are not ideal for transporting the Heavy Cargo trailers. Having sunk over 1300 hours into the game has also helped with identifying bad routes for Heavy Cargo the trailers.

Current Mood: crushed
Current Location: Clinton, WA

Entry tags:

sorry

I'm Sorry

I have issues that I'm trying to resolve, and I hurt people in the process. I lost a friend today and it's all my fault.

I'm sorry that I don't properly respect personal boundaries.

I'm sorry that I let things slip about people when I shouldn't.

I'm sorry that I am now someone that you can't trust.

You might as well not be friends with me now.

I'm sorry.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Clinton, WA
Current Music: A State of Trance 2013 (In The Club: Full Continuous DJ Mix) - Armin Van Buuren

Entry tags:

First Run of ProMods 2.16

Tonight, I ran my first session of the ProMods 2.16 mod on Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ETS2). I was holding off on updating my game from version 1.26 to 1.27 because my favorite map mod hadn't been updated yet. The reason for the delay of ProMods getting updated? The game's model format got changed, so the ProMods team had to convert all of their models to match the new format. They also had to add new police vehicles for the 19 countries that they added to the base game's map.

First Delivery Run in PM 2.16
I pruned a few mods that were outdated from my mod list and activated the new versions of existing ones in the game's Mod Manager for my current profile. Then I went to load my last save, at which point the game complained that it couldn't find the old mods that the save file had last used. I told it to continue loading the save despite the changes in the mod load-out. Due to the changes from the game itself and the mods I am using, the game relocated me back to my home garage in Köln, Germany.

First delivery I took was from Köln, Germany to Metz, France. (The cargo types aren't important, so I'm not going to list them here.) From Metz, I headed down to Livorno, Italy. I got to see the new highway segments that ProMods added to the map which link Genova and Livorno to each other and to France. Traveling along the coast of Italy and France will be so much easier now! I used to have to head north from Genova or Livorno to get to a different east/west highway to travel between them. Now, I can stay near the coast on the E80 highway between them.

Police Roam the Roads
Regarding the addition of police cars to ETS2, I have no problem with them being present in the game. I saw a few as I was traveling the highways, but I wasn't speeding or breaking other laws, so they didn't pay me any mind. I feel they add another layer of immersion to the game. The SCS Software forums have a few threads of complaints about the police being present, but the messages posted reveal that the complaining posters are generally speeding at more than 5 kph over the speed limits. (If you're going to speed, you don't get to complain about receiving speeding tickets for doing so.) The only thing that changes for me with having the police present is that I'm going to be a lot more careful about speeding, particularly on exit ramps which usually have a lowered speed limit due to the curvature of the ramps.

Poland
I haven't been over to Poland yet with the new version of the map, but I will try to make a few runs over there to see some of the updates that ProMods has been doing over that way. The Poland Rebuilding team pulled out of ProMods for various reasons and ProMods is going through that section of the map to bring up to ProMods' standards. Screenshots in the ProMods forums (Link) show a vast improvement over the original work. Poland Rebuilding's crew did a decent job, but there were issues with how they did things and I always thought things could be better. Looks like things will be over the next few months/years as the ProMods crew cleans up that section of the map.

Overall, I think I will be continuing to play ETS2 and enjoying the new features brought by both SCS Software (the game publisher) and ProMods together. Is it painful to wait for updates of beloved mods? Sure, but they do eventually get released. Fortunately, I can roll back to a previous version of the game thanks to Steam while I wait for these updates so I can keep playing. My (currently) 1276 hours of time logged on the game shows that I'll keep trucking across Europe for the time being.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Clinton, WA
Current Music: A Race Against Time - PYLOT

Entry tags:

Hiding No More

Inspired by Lennyx's confidence and attitude from the times that we've hung out together, I've set a new policy for myself. I'm going to be less restrictive with what I hide from friends that I know and trust. I really like how open Lennyx is about stuff that I ask them and it's made me realize how much I do hide from others, whether from fear of others not understanding and being judgmental or worrying it will make things awkward for myself/others. Now, I will obviously not share some things with certain groups of people, say coworkers, but overall, I intend to be more open than I have been.

Most of the stuff that I hide has to do with gender identity and my interests, particularly in feminine clothing and cute stuff. I identify as genderqueer/genderfluid, which means that I tend to present as I feel that day or at least lean towards a neutral presentation. My pronouns are He/Him, but I do accept being called She/Her. This spooks the service staff at restaurants a bit as they tend to apologize for "misgendering" once they see my face. The long ponytail tends to throw them off. I have desire to convert my wardrobe to mostly softer fabrics, which means I usually go shopping in the Junior's section of JCPenny for clothing. So far, I haven't gotten many odd looks for doing so, but I'm usually with a female friend when I do this sort of shopping. I'll probably never have the confidence to do it on my own for a long time, but having non-judgmental friends definitely helps calm my anxiety about doing my clothes shopping in the Junior's department.

I do have days where I wish I was born female, but for the most part I'm okay with the body that I do have. I'm finally at a weight that I'm happy with (140 +/- 1-2 lbs) instead of being close to 110 lbs. I have hair that is long enough to do a ponytail with, which I usually keep up so it's not caught under bag straps or seat belts. Some day, I would like to get tattoos, but I'm still trying to decide on a design for the first one. I'd like to experiment with fingernail polish as there are so many interesting colors, but I'm currently living at home with my parents since I lost my job. My mom might be okay with it, but my dad certainly won't be. Also, the smells of the chemicals of the nail polish and remover would give him a headache due to his multiple chemical sensitivity. At some point, I would like to be able to afford to laser off my facial hair so I don't have to shave almost daily. Within 24 hours, my facial hair starts coming back as stubble and I very much don't like that.

In the past, a trans friend asked if I was going to transition. I don't intend to do a full transition from male to female, but I do want to at least alter my looks a bit so I'm not read as completely male. I like being treated like one of the girls every once in awhile.

As for other things that I hide, I will make them more known later. Gender stuff has been a central focus for the last few years or so. It's nice having friends/family that accept me as I am. Those who don't? I don't consider them friends/family worth keeping.