I finished replacing the deck boards. That includes the last board behind all the plants and the "mini" boards at the corners.
I highlighted what I meant by mini-boards in red circles. They're very small compared to the rest of the planks.
But all's not completely finished, because I'll be spending up through mid-winter putting the rotting boards and the leftovers in the trash.
I'd imagine that my allergies will improve once all of those boards finally are out of here.
However, I don't need to do anything else about the deck until Spring, when I'll be looking at revving up for replacing the stairs and railings. (And the skirting. Can't forget the skirting.)
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it being warm enough here in November to go barefoot.
I'd been watching the Great Blizzard Bank Heist from afar, figuring it really didn't impact me at all.
"Monster Lizard Ravages East Coast!"
After all, Classic Era doesn't have guild banks, and my toons in Cataclysm Classic aren't in a guild. I was about to say that neither were my Retail toons when I remembered Puggers Anonymous, the guild that Rades created back in the day.
I knew that Rades had left some toons in the guild for storage purposes, and I will never remove them as long as I'm around, but I also wasn't sure if Rades had actually created a guild bank or not. I never really used guild banks for my own alts in Retail*, although in Classic Era I have been tempted to create a guild just so I can keep the whispers of "hey, wanna join a guild?" away.
So I decided to login to take a look.**
First, I had to run the gauntlet of Blizzard-foisted "Gear Updates" to allow me to "catch up" in what my gear ought to be versus what it actually was. Given that Balthan was in the L30s circa Mists of Pandaria, and his gear was likely quest greens and the occasional blue, it would have made sense to take the Gear Update.
I didn't take the gear update. I was perfectly happy exactly as I was hanging around Ironforge, thankyouverymuch.
Before I even got to check the guild bank, I was inundated with what I will politely call "stuff".
What's New? How about that overly cheery Chromie, for starters? Or the new character models. Or pretty much anything after mid-Mists.
Then there was a Wrathion pop-up:
It went by so fast while I was trying to read the What's New that I ended up having to login on another toon to get this graphic once more.
I remember him. He was that post-Cataclysm egg you saved out in Badlands. (I think.) Funny how they grow up so fast, yet the passage of time in game seems to be so tightly compacted. If I were in charge of writing in WoW, the first thing I'd do is spread the timeline out.
Anyway, in case I didn't get the memo, there was also this quest pop-up:
Again, I had to take the screenshot from another toon because I simply ESC-ed out before I realized I ought to get a screenshot of that.
And then there was this:
You don't say...
Given that my last talent changes were a DECADE ago, I would expect that they've been reset. Blizzard has this thing of making change the standard operating procedure, because nothing can ever be just good enough as-is. And no, I don't want to teleport to Stormwind. The last toon that I had that was at max level was in 2014, and I've no desire to go through any of the last 5 old expansions, much less the current one. Just let me check the guild bank. Sheesh.
I also discovered that despite my best intentions, Blizzard is constantly hounding me to spend my talent points:
You can't click X to get rid of it, and no amount of finagling will allow me to remove it. The annoyance level is right up there with the "DO YOUR DAILIES!" crap that people would push for in TBC Classic and Wrath Classic.
Given that I've been known to go several levels without spending talent points in Classic and Classic Era --eh, it's not a big deal unless you hit the "big" levels such as L20 and L40-- this constant nagging would get old really fast.
Still, I managed to finally clear my screen enough to go check the guild bank:
In case you're wondering, Balthan has exactly 172 gold on him. Yes, I'm poor even in Retail.
So Rades never bothered to create a Guild Bank for Puggers Anonymous.
*Almost all of my Alliance toons were part of whatever that old guild on Ysera-US was called, but my bank alts and my Horde toons were guildless by the time I pulled the plug on Retail in 2014. I have since checked online afterward and discovered that all of those Alliance toons were eventually kicked out of the guild. Or the guild disbanded. Whichever.
**I also had a short conversation with Kamalia in the comments of her most recent post in Kamalia et Alia, while I tried to puzzle through how a returning player from years away would work in terms of picking up an old toon and trying to play once more. Maybe after the conversation I shouldn't have been surprised when I logged in, but I certainly wasn't expecting all of this to be thrown at me at once; I felt like I was in some Bizarro World dodge ball game.
It should come as no surprise that I've come across a bunch of memes over the years where games have earned a certain reputation, good or bad. There's the low hanging fruit, such as GTA 6 vaporware, and the complete disaster of certain releases (I'm looking at you, No Man's Sky). So, for this Meme Monday, I thought I'd dip into my bag of games that have acquired a certain reputation.
Admittedly, Cyberpunk 2077 eventually got much more stable and, well, complete with the extra content, but it took a while. I don't think Fallout 76 can compete. From Reddit.
D&D 4th Edition was extremely divisive to the player base, the fallout of which directly led to Paizo's Pathfinder RPG and gave a boost to the Old School RPG movement. My opinion was always that D&D 4e would have been better off as an RPG without being tied to the D&D name, so it's nice to see someone else with that opinion. from Reddit.
Ubisoft and bugs. 'Nuff said. From ifunny.co.
Yes, I know, nudity doesn't exist in WoW. However, WoW does have that reputation --courtesy of Goldshire-- that it's a naughty naughty game. Just try not to think that the female toon on the screen is probably a guy IRL. I know I can't. From quickmeme.
I was perusing my YouTube feed, and nestled in the Pete Rose stuff* and electronics videos** was this from Michael Bell and Bellular Gaming:
Sorry, just the screencap.
"Hm..." I thought. "Isn't Beledar the name of a character from a David Eddings series?"
Oh, wait. That's Beldar. Eh, close enough.
*Because I'm from Cincinnati, as was Pete, and because I'm from Cincy of course I must be interested in all things Pete since he played for the Reds in their heyday of The Big Red Machine. The reality is that there are days when if feels like I must be the only West Sider (Pete's home turf) who didn't like him very much. Yeah, he could hit, but he was a big asshole, his kid was a big asshole, and the Reds were likely held back during his tenure as manager in the 1980s.
**Yes, another of my hobbies. This time the videos included methods on cleaning relays. My old Pioneer receiver (bought in 1987) needs some cleaning, and when you click on one of these videos you get inundated with others.
I've been hunting down Halloween music for giving out candy tonight, and one piece that keeps coming up in my searches and on the local stations is Charles Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette.
Gounod wrote it to make fun of a critic of his --and by all accounts the critic instantly realized the piece was about him-- but it wasn't particularly "Halloween-y" back then.
Then along came Alfred Hitchcock.
Were it not for ol' Alfred using Funeral March of a Marionette as his theme music for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, we probably wouldn't even have this piece in the Halloween lexicon.
Still, I wonder just how many kids nowadays have ever seen an episode of the series from The Master of Suspense; it's not nearly as iconic as The Twilight Zone, which has marathons on some cable channels around the Christmas and New Year's holidays, or The Outer Limits, which was revived and had another run from the mid-90s to early 2000s.
While I was working on the deck this weekend, I caught myself doing one of my quirks: talking to myself out loud. Apparently the majority of people have an inner monologue that they converse with, but I have an unfortunate tendency to respond to my inner monologue aloud when nobody's around.*
That got me to perusing my meme pile for memes that fit the description of geeky quirks.
OMG yes! From Titbits and Teacups, and from Nerd Quirks, which is sadly no more.
I could also use this on a book memes post, but I figured it works here too. From ifunny.co.
I have been known to do this. From @MisterD78UK.
And yes, Reading Quirks does exist as an Instagram feed. Almost makes me want to login to Instagram to read all the rest.
I'm not exactly sure why I derive such enjoyment from working on a project, but I do. Maybe it's that my job is a case study in never seeing anything truly finished*, or maybe that I'm naturally biased toward working on things with my hands, but when a job finishes up there's a wave of satisfaction that washes over me, if only for a little while.
Of course, things are never that easy. About halfway through a project I get an itch to start another one, and that presents a problem. Sure, the new shiny idea does capture my attention when I'm in the middle of something else, but it also means that I've forgotten why I was excited about the original project in the first place. If I can get through these urges, I can see a project through to completion.
As far as the deck goes, yes, I have felt those urges already.
Still, I've been pushing onward.
My workstation on the porch. I thought the deck was completely attached to the porch, but having seen the framing underneath, they are actually separate. Go figure.
Thankfully I bought the miter saw quickstand, because I wouldn't be able to finish this deck project otherwise. The reviews talked about how light the Ryobi miter saw is, and if that's light I'd hate to lift the "normal" weighted saws.
I finished the last of this current batch of wood, but this also involved doing some other work on the deck.
See where that exit to the north is? That's one of the two locations where I'm going to replace the stairs. As you can tell, there's only one post there to attach a stair railing. Since you need two stair rails, that meant either I was going to put in a post now or wait and do it next year when I actually work on the stairs.
I chose the former. Do it now while the area under the deck is exposed so I don't have to take out boards later.
Painter's tape is a wonderful invention.
I used painter's tape to attach a level, so I could work it without needing an extra pair of hands.
What's hidden by the support board are extra screws attaching the post to the ledger board.
No, your eyes do not deceive you, that post is taller than it's compatriot on the left side. I decided it was smarter to install a longer post and then cut it down rather than risk installing a post that was too short.
So now, with 2/3 of the rows replaced, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I have 3-4 leftover 16' deck boards that I'll use when the last batch of wood arrives, and once those are all installed I'll be done for the year. I think I'll use this Winter to let my back rest.
*If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, there are "projects" that end up being "completed", but I'd say only 1 out of 10 projects I've worked on ever crossed the finish line to my satisfaction. There's far too much horse trading going on trying to keep the bugs and disruption to a minimum versus finishing within a (so-called) reasonable time frame.
