Ordinary Day

One of the side effects of spazzkat playing all this Skyrim here at the Murk: I’ve totally gotten back onto a Nethack kick.

I had a great game going, and fired up the save file from yesterday’s run tonight. I was in Sokoban and died horribly, like ya do, ’cause, well, Nethack. I proceeded to have the following conversation with kisanthe:

annathepiper: I’m in the middle of Serious Nethack May Be Serious
annathepiper: Level 11 character currently in Sokoban
kisanthe: Ooh! Hope it’s the Bag of Holding Sokoban.
annathepiper: SHIT DEAD
annathepiper: Hallucinating and burdened and surrounded and then a damn incubus started taking my armor off!
annathepiper: Also, it was the amulet of reflection sokoban!
kisanthe: …okay, that’s not funny, but it is funny.
annathepiper: It was, really ;)
annathepiper: I was cheerfully sneaking through the final treasure room killing monsters one at a time and then a damn black light went off
annathepiper: And then suddenly HELLO EVERYBODY AWAKE!
kisanthe: You’d think a *black* light wouldn’t wake everybody up!
annathepiper: So I backed into a corner and started shooting everything in sight, until the incubus showed up!
kisanthe: So, assuming the black light affected the critters it woke up too… you died naked in a big murderous hallucinatory orgy?
annathepiper: Yeah pretty much XD
kisanthe: Best way to go! ;)

And now in my current game, I was hungry, so I whipped out a tin and discovered it contained pickled dwarf. There I am nomming it, and the next monster I see? A dwarf. And all I can think is AWK-WARD!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

In which our heroine does get the Amulet–but doesn’t even make it out of Gehennom once she has it. AUGH. Farewell, Natil the Elf Ranger, and may your passage into the West be smooth sailing!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve played Nethack–and I’m kind of surprised that on a day that ISN’T a full moon, I’ve got a serious Ascension candidate!

Short form: Natil the Elf Ranger has completed the Quest and is now seeking a ring of levitation so that she can finish Fort Ludios. She’s currently at Exp. level 16, HP 114, and AC -38! Thanks to early wands of wishing as well as other lucky finds she is armored for bear, with gray dragon scale mail, speed boots, gauntlets of dex, and a shield of reflection. She’s armed with her original elven dagger as well as the Longbow of Diana.

Wish her luck, folks. Details for the Nethack geeks behind the fold!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

In which I come agonizingly close to actually winning the game--but in which I die hideously on the Astral Plane!

( ARGH... )

( FInal statistics... )

Man, I'm tired now. ;)

In which our heroine succeeds in the Wizard Quest, only to discover thereafter that this game has a Fort Ludios after all; and in which the new moon doesn't really slow her down in the slightest.

( The spoiler hits!--More-- )

Very, very promising Nethack game in progress tonight. (ETA: slapping a cut on this for length.)

( Read more... )

The YASD of the evening? Choking on a black pudding corpse! *headdesk* GAH! I should have known. And here I thought my YASD was going to be "swallowed by air elemental". ;)

I'd made it down to dungeon level 22. I'd cleaned out a 10x6 leprechaun hall on level 9, and had used the gold to boogie back to Minetown and buy my AC down to -18, which was pretty nifty. A few potions of gain level took me from level 12 to level 15. And I found a third ghost of mine (a previous iteration of Natil the Ranger, in fact) on level 11--the Big Room. Notable loot out of that haul was an extra set of GDSM and some more gold.

Decided to go looking for the Fort at that point, and made it down to level 22, picking up more gold out of vaults on the way. Found a couple of David's Treasure Zoos as well as some throne rooms, and had just killed my first two dragons in the throne room on level 22--a white and a silver. The silver one dropped scales. And eating the white one, don't you know, was the one that pushed me up into Too Satiated to Eat Anything Else. But was I paying attention? Nooooo! *headdesks some more*

Goodbye Natil the Ranger...

You choked in The Dungeons of Doom on dungeon level 22 with 153557 points,
and 14178 pieces of gold, after 17734 moves.
You were level 15 with a maximum of 97 hit points when you choked.

You made the top ten list!

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  1    5342682  jenna-Arc-Hum-Fem-Neu ascended to demigoddess-hood.   376 [409]
  2    4585962  jenna-Ran-Hum-Fem-Neu ascended to demigoddess-hood.    94 [369]
  3     313780  jenna-Tou-Hum-Fem-Neu died in The Dungeons of Doom on
                level 27.  Killed by a captain.                         - [153]
  4     153557  Natil-Ran-Elf-Fem-Cha choked on her food in The
                Dungeons of Doom on level 22.  Choked on a black
                pudding corpse.                                        84  [97]

I see I've dropped a bones file. Muaha. If I can get another character that deep in the dungeon, that's going to be a hell of a stash to loot!

(x-posted between my journal and nethack)

I blame this on a conversation with spazzkat and risu on the MurkMUSH, and the fact that the world just needs more Nethack icons. And also, because Nethack and lolcats are two great tastes that go great together.



And also, because cheesygirl continues to make wonderful Doctor Who icons, and because Ten and cats also go quite well together:



The Nethack icons are mine. Feel free to swipe 'em, credit me on your userpics pages if you take 'em. The Doctor icons are cheesygirl's; I pulled them from here. Please to follow her wishes for icon swiping!

On the merry recommendations of casirafics and kieri, I have tonight purchased off the iTunes store the audio version of the Doctor Who book I just read, The Stone Rose. The main virtue of this audio version is that it is performed by the Tenth Doctor Himself, and it is extremely gigglesome to hear him switching back and forth between his natural Scottish accent and his Doctor Voice. I've only just listened to the very beginning so far, but I have hit enough to hear him do his impersonations of Rose, Jackie, and Mickey. As promised, too, his imitation of Jackie is quite, quite good. ;) I think I shall have to consider purchasing the other two books he reads, and possibly also the one read by Anthony Stewart Head as well since mmm, Voice of Giles. The only drawback with these things are that they are abridged, but eh well, I'd wish to have the printed versions as well anyway!

At the same time I also purchased a couple of albums by the Paperboys--Dilapidated Beauty and The Road to Ellenside, since both of them have finally shown up on the iTunes music store. Hurray! I've been anxious to have those for some time.

I've been back onto a Nethack kick, jumping back and forth between playing Wizards and Rangers and Healers and occasional jaunts into some of the classes I don't play very often, like Monk and Tourist. I blame it entirely upon the aforementioned Mr. Tennant that I now have a Tourist character file for Nethack, wherein the character is named "Doctor", his dog is named K-9, and his default fruit name is "jelly baby".

Meanwhile, a bit of writing news. Last night I fired off a couple of query letters to agents, hoping to use it as a prod to get myself in gear with finishing up the edits on Lament. (Queen of Souls, not yet done, is not yet queryable.) And I am arranging to be at this year's Writer's Weekend as well, so if folks on my Friends list are going to be there, sing out and let me know!

Miles since the 23rd: 49.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1981.8
Miles out of Isengard: 188.8
Miles to Minas Tirith: 597.2

So most of Borg is at the company meeting today, except for us contractors. I've been asked to go ahead and try to do our regular testing today, but the problem with this is that I am extremely dubious that we're going to see an actual build. Given that I was told to assume that no FTE's are going to be around, if the build process breaks at all, I will have no way to actually get anything to test. Guess we'll just have to see; I was also told that if we don't have anything to test by 2pm, scram.

I suspect I will be scramming at 2pm. And I suspect I'll be poking at Lament up until then.

The Martian Death Flu has almost blown over. I still have periodic sneezes and coughs, but they are slowly decreasing in intensity, and my ability to sleep is slowly coming back as well. I am relieved. It's good to start feeling normal again.

I am now completely caught up on season 1 of Lost, though I need to watch the season 2 premiere still; it's waiting on our Tivo. I hope to watch that, along with the Battlestar Galactica summer finale and the next episode of Bones, this weekend with mamishka. She's come down sick too, though, so here's hoping that she'll actually be up for that.

Latest read: the Serenity novelization. Spoiler-free mini-review: very good job for what it is, i.e., a media novelization. There are bits in it that aren't in the movie, which were interesting additions, and the author did a good job of changing points of view between various characters. He nicely captured the "voices" of the members of the crew, and once or twice got in some thoughts with a couple of them that were actively funny (especially with Jayne). I especially liked the bits from River's point of view, because I liked how he portrayed her thought processes and how her mind works.

Also, I read the last of the Serenity three-part comics, and my overall impression of them has not changed. Nice little story bits, but there's just not enough! They feel like five-or-ten-minute glimpses of what really ought to have been a much longer story. The art's nice, and the feel is right, but there's just not enough there.

I have an unexpectedly good Nethack game going on my laptop at home. Level 12 Rogue with gauntlets of power, a shield of reflection, and the potential to get gray dragon scale mail if I can just find or make another scroll of enchant armor. Made it through Sokoban and the Gnomish Mines, explored all the way down to the Medusa level (and promptly fled back upstairs from the titan by the stairs), and am now in search of Fort Ludios.

Tonight, we gather at the Burning Hand to celebrate the birthday of kathrynt's mother. There will be tasty smoked meats to consume and alcholic beverages and general camaraderie and fun.

Tomorrow, I go with mamishka to meet up with jessicac and kingchiron for a viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. This ought to be fun. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a pretty much frame-by-frame recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark done by a bunch of kids, over the course of about six years. You can see the cast visibly growing up. Hee.

Still no word from Luna yet.

Thursday miles: 2.45 (walking)
Friday morning miles: 0.5 (walking)
Miles out of Hobbiton: 342.9
Miles to Rivendell: 115.1

And here, have a quiz!

( What Cute Animal Are You? )