Things Toby says while playing FFVII

We’re in a part where the main party is going through an office building at night. There’s a cafeteria and of course Toby sends Cloud running through the chairs.

“Fuck yo’ cafeteria! Shit strewn everywhere! This can only be the work of AVALANCHE!”

[AVALANCHE is the eco-terrorist group the main characters are in, which fights against Shinra]

“Stealing from the Shinra pension fund!”

Also there are escalators in the building and Toby’s taking every one of them, ignoring the stairs next to them. I wonder how many players do
that...?

We have established the game won’t let you go down the up escalator, but that if you don’t move Cloud at the top of the escalator it usually delivers the other two characters right into you in an entertaining manner.

Toby has now opted to take the party up 59 floors of stairs instead of taking the elevator. One of the party is not happy and he and Cloud are arguing as they climb.

Ha! The characters are slowing down the higher they go!

More FFVII

We’re in another cafeteria. Toby is sending Cloud running around knocking over all the chairs again.

Me: You know there’s some employee who lives in the Sector 5 slums working here for $4.25 an hour who has to put all that back?

Toby: Cloud’s a job creator!

BTW

There’s a new Penric & Desdemona novella out, but you should be warned that
it (coincidentally, obviously!) concerns a plague. Title: The Physicians of
Vilnoc.

Sourdough 2.0 and 3.0

11th and 12th feedings, May 10 and 11

Much the same: no activity indicating yeast, sour-bad smells. I have now concluded that I have two carefully nurtured bacterial colonies. I shall report that to the project in 2 days, after the 14th feeding, then I shall toss them.

But what would cause them to fail? After some more research, I found out that our city’s water systems doesn’t use chlorine, but chloramine to treat the water. That’s a combo of chlorine and ammonia and, more importantly, it does not outgas from water if you let it sit overnight.

We have a whole-house water filter that the builders installed, and we somewhat recently had it serviced, so it should be working. I am not sure exactly which filter it is and the company’s website says that some filter out chloramine, and others don’t.

So I started two more, using the Serious Eats method (link in a prior entry), one with tap water straight from the tap, and one with bottled water, which should technically tell me if the water is the problem. If those both fail, I’ll get some different bottled water and try using a starter with some yeast put in it. I want to know why they all fail!

So SE#1, started last night, smelled like flour and a little bit of sourness today. It also had either a lot of hooch on top, or it had separated, so I went ahead and fed it. SE#2, started this morning when I realized I could try the bottled water, smelled like flour and water. I went ahead and fed it anyway, just to get them both on the same schedule.

SCIENCE! Of a sort.