girlofprey

Playstation 5 all set up, PS3 and 4 relegated to a bed in a spare bedroom, wiped down the games and installed Valhalla. I decided to do it without setting up my internet first, because a lot of people these days on game podcasts like to claim there's no such thing as installing games from a disc anymore, a disc is just an activation device to download it from the internet. And one of my nephews wants a PS5, and is saving up money for it, but the place he's currently in doesn't give him individual internet, so I wanted to see if it was true, and so there was no point in him getting a console. I loaded up the Valhalla disc with no wired connection and no password for our wireless hub, and it copied it from a disc and let me start playing it. So I have no idea what those people - video game sort-of experts - are talking about.

Then, afterwards, I set up the internet and tried to log into my Playstation account. But it has two-step verification, so after logging in they send a code to your phone and you have to wait and input that. I waited about 15 minutes for my code, turned it off and on again and tried again, and got nothing. Then when I finally gave up in frustration and turned it off, I got about five texts with verification codes at once. So that was annoying. But hopefully a problem that will be easily sorted out tomorrow.

I was made redundant yesterday. Not anything to do with the pandemic, in fact, or not directly at least - the company I'm contracted out to is moving to a new building soon, and last week they apparently told the heads of my company they didn't need any staff back in until they'd completed that move, and then this week they told them that actually that didn't include receptionists, because they weren't going to have a company-specific reception in the new building, so the other receptionists and I weren't needed. So that's a pain. It's not like I wasn't totally expecting it because of the pandemic, but I did think I'd at least get to my next full paycheque before I was out of work. I will still get most of it, but...it's just not what I was expecting. But not totally out of left field - I'd been wondering if they'd even need reception in the new building for a while, because they're moving to a couple of floors in a building that has its own reception. I don't really do much besides greet guests, hand out passes to people who've forgotten theirs and watch the security barriers, so if someone else is doing that, I'm sort of doing nothing. But some of my colleagues tried to be optimistic for me, and said there was a reception desk on the floorplan, and pointed out I still do reception stuff for the building in Manchester because their building reception just calls and emails us about things. I guess I just didn't think I'd have such short notice between being told my services wouldn't be required and being let go, but that's the world of work, I guess.

I'm a little down about it, not because I loved the job, but just because I know how much work and stress it will probably be to find another one. Particularly in the current job market. A part of me wants to not bother, and just live off the last of my recent paycheques until spring, when hopefully there'll be a vaccine, the weather will be better, and any business that are going to close down have already closed down so we'll know where we are. I know that the job scene probably won't be much better in spring than now. And mum wants me to get on Jobseekers and get whatever benefits I'm entitled to until I get another job, just to have some money coming in. I don't really know. There's also a chance I'll have some redundancy payment coming in, but I'm really not sure about that given the type of job I was working, so we'll have to wait and see. The CEOs of my current company are apparently going to write to me letting me know all the details, and my manager says traditionally I would need to go in for a final face-to-face meeting, but given the circumstances he's going to try to avoid that. So yep. Unemployed and on finite cash for at least the moment.

The let's players I watch came back last night. It was pretty sad - the ones who talked about the situation at the beginning were really upset - but they're intending to get on with things. They are taking down a lot of their old videos though, with Ryan Haywood in them. It's a shame, because while I can't really enjoy watching him anymore, especially given some of the jokes they make and stuff they do, there were a lot of let's plays he's in that I really love for the other people in them and their jokes. And I guess I won't be able to watch them anymore. But it's fair enough, and they don't want to profit from him or promote him or be associated with him anymore, which is entirely understandable. It just really sucks.

Also this week I've been trying to get up a bit earlier and go to bed a bit earlier, and we've been trying to walk the dog earlier on in the day, because of the nights drawing in. And frankly it is throwing me for a loop. I used to do a bit of work in my room through the day, since I started cutting down on my computer time, and then a nice walk in the fresh air was a good palette-cleanser, moving into going online when I got back. Now I'm going more or less right after I get up, mum and I can't get a schedule sorted because she does other things earlier in the day, and I come back from the walk tired and just wanting to sit and play Animal Crossing. I don't really want to be out walking the dog after dark, but some more work needs to be done tweaking this schedule. There has been a lot of change this week.

For anyone wondering what 'the Ryan Haywood' thing is - yesterday some accusations started circulating that one of the let's players I follow (Ryan Haywood) and another streamer who works with him had had nudes leaked that they'd supposedly sent to fans, and the worst accusations were that they were to minors. The person who originally posted the stuff later said the minors thing wasn't true or had been proved false, but both the guys are married, and the accusations that they'd been sexting fans and cheating on their wives remained. All I ever really saw was people arguing about it on twitter - some people believing the underage thing, other people saying they were scum who'd cheated on their wives, other people saying the pictures and screenshots had obviously been doctored and weren't real. Rooster Teeth didn't say anything, didn't make any statements on twitter or their site, the stream yesterday apparently was cancelled, but they had a live podcast and didn't mention anything about any of the allegations. But Ryan Haywood has just posted a tweet that he 'made mistakes' and is now leaving Rooster Teeth to try to rebuild his family. So it seems like the cheating stuff is true.

The coincidental thing for me is that he's the Let's Player I was talking about that pissed me off a few weeks ago, and who also around the same time made some weird comments about how he tries to annoy his (working) wife around the house so she'll 'send him to his room' and he won't have to look after the kids or do any chores and can just play with electronics and make videos. And I didn't want that to colour my view of the accusations, people can say that stuff still not actually do anything shitty, but...well. I do think people who have a bad attitude towards women are more likely to treat women badly, particularly their wives. And here we are. He's said a lot of other weird stuff in the past too, but they all have, most men I know and particularly men who think the world needs to hear their voice say weird stuff about women sometimes. But it does suck. I used to really like him. And he's leaving the company, and he is one of the main members of the group I watch and their tech guy, so I don't know how they're going to change after all of this. They're supposed to be having another livestream tomorrow. I feel like maybe it's going to get cancelled too, but we'll see. They might soldier on. I still haven't seen any actual statement from Achievement Hunter or Rooster Teeth. And I don't know about the other guy, but he's not one of the guys I regularly watch. Also I found out a bunch of other stuff about Rooster Teeth I never knew before, which wasn't great. But I still enjoy them. For now. I guess.

It's extra weird because I'm also watching Kinda Funny videos, who are also part of the Rooster Teeth company, and they are criticising Ubisoft for not being more upfront and open about the accusations against them. But silence from their own company is okay, I guess.

Also, that shop that sold me the necklace on Etsy contacted me asking me for feedback. So I have replied to them saying that I'm not happy with the picture they used to advertise the product. I wanted to contact the bracelet woman too, just to be fair, but it seems like I'd need a photo of the thing to really make my case, and aaaaaaaaaaargh. I don't have a smartphone, and my cameras are complicated, and infrequently used.

Well, it's July already, somehow. 4th of July in fact. Happy Independence Day to any Americans on my flist. We call it Fuck Off Puritans Day.

I'm getting paid next Friday, and that Sunday is the Ubisoft preview event, which seemed so long away when it was announced. And now it's almost here. But the weirdest thing is the fact that we're over halfway through the year, and still almost nothing is confirmed in the videogame world for this winter. The next generation of consoles is coming out. We still don't know exactly when, or how much they'll cost. I'm still saving up for the PS5, and hoping however much I've saved will be enough. There are multiple massive games coming out, and none of them have release dates. Probably because a lot are planning to tie in with the PS5/Xbox Series X releases, but still. Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is coming out. I don't know when. Yakuza 7 is coming out. I don't know when. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is coming out. It just says 'Holiday 2020'. Cyberpunk 2077 just got delayed from September to November 19th, but who can rely on their dates at this point? We still don't know what the launch games are going to be for the two consoles or when they're coming out, and how exactly are they supposed to do that and not eat into each other's profits? Which is probably more than anything why no-one has set dates yet, but genuinely, this more than anything brings it home to me how much this pandemic has made everything uncertain. July, and we don't know when this year's next-gen consoles will be released. Wild.

But Ubisoft are having their conference, and they're going to talk about Watch Dogs: Legion, which is supposed to be coming out this year, and Assassin's Creed, which is also supposed to be coming out this year. And the rumours are that they're also going to announce the next Far Cry game, which will be coming out next spring, and the rumours are that Giancarlo Esposito will be playing the villain. I don't know if I'm ever going to get over Joseph Seed from Far Cry 5, at this point, but Giancarlo Esposito might well be enough to sway my attention.

And generally, I'm glad that I wasn't called back into work at this point - well, even more glad - because all this talk of local lockdowns would probably play havoc with that, a bit. No-one's even said what it means, if you're area gets locked down but the area you work in doesn't, or vice-versa. Or if it'll be a full, only go out once a day lockdown, or just 'restrict your movements' like we're doing now. But frankly, I don't know what's going to happen now the pubs are open. People already aren't following the rules or doing social distancing a lot, so how they'll do it while drunk I don't know. My mum has been keeping an eye on the figures for new cases in the nearby cities, Leeds and Wakefield. And yesterday, they suddenly jumped to double - for both places - what they were the day before. Which was higher than it's ever been since she started checking it. So she thinks it's either a weird typo, or shit's bad. My family and I aren't planning to go to the pub. Or to the hairdresser's. Sorry economy. We will see what happens.

The pizza I got tonight was incredibly hot, so in between the pieces falling apart and trying not to burn my fingers, I brushed the crust of a few slices against a colder part of the box, which I usually try not to touch while I'm transferring the pizza out of it. So I will have to wait two weeks to see if that comes to anything. Not that I would know the difference between being infected by that, or any of the other tiny terrifying things that happen every day, which seem like a risk even if not a large risk. A man stroked our dog yesterday without asking if he could. Mum wiped him down with disinfectant wipes when we got home (the dog, not the man). It all seems like too much, but also not nearly enough.

I'm still enjoying nature though. Today I learned that the little flowers I've liked lately are tufted vetch, and we saw a grey wagtail in our garden, and a chaffinch on our walk, and a small gang of starlings did a little murmuration thing over us. And I fed the dog watermelon. Those things are nice.

I kind of want to watch all of Game of Thrones, for beautiful Cersei, and to some degree Oberyn, but I also don't know if it will be worth all the rape. All the rape.

Today on Tumblr I saw someone reblogging how you can't be a real feminist and support porn and prostitution, and after all the SWERF stuff that's been going around in the last few years, it was a real relief.

I'm trying my very hardest to buy some thing from Marks and Spencer's website - including a birthday present for my mum - and I don't know what the problem is, but it just won't let me click the button. I can get all the way through to the checkout, but when it gives me payment options, I click to pay with Paypal, and the Paypal window appears and then immediately disappears. And when I try to pay with a card, it lets me put all the information in - multiple times - but then won't let me click to actually pay. I would assume it's because the site's busy with a lot of people buying online at the moment, but I had a similar problem months ago when trying to buy something with a giftcard, without opening an account with them. Trying to check out with a guest was an 'option', but I personally couldn't actually use it. Every time I gave them a bit more of my personal information I seemed to get a bit further. But now I just don't know what to do about it. Except keep trying. And getting frustrated.

It's especially annoying because there are things I want to buy that are sort of summer/garden things, and they keep selling out then coming back into stock - because obviously they're popular products at the moment. So I would love to buy them when they're actually available. But I can't. I hate Marks and Spencer's.

Good tweets:

Woman.

Dog and baby.

What's really nice on Etsy - aside from the retail therapy - is when you find out at least one other person in the world likes the weird things you do, enough to make an item around them. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who knows about the weird, beautiful arapaima fish, and then you find a shop where someone's offering to send you a plush of one.

I had a lot of plans for today. I was going to try to watch Jaws, having gotten a hankering for it (fandom finally caught up and wrote slash, <3). But I don't have any way to get it except through my Playstation really - I'm not going to use Amazon - and apparently it was on Netflix, but got removed on the 11th of this month. And also my internet's stopped working reliably on the Playstation, so I can't even get it from the Playstation Store.

Also I was going to put my brand new duvet set that I got at Christmas on my bed, to freshen it up, and I was going to put it on alongside clean sheets one night after I had a shower. I've had a shower, but it turns out that after a previous fitted sheet for my bed had to be thrown away we never got a new one, so there are literally no clean sheets to put on bed. So I can't. Or I can, but I'll be uncomfortable.

Sad times.

But I had plenty of other plans I carried out, so it's not all bad.

Last night my mum rubbed Dettol on the dog's head after I got a pizza delivery and he arrived unfortunately at the same time as the dog was out in the garden, and the delivery guy may or may not have patted him on the head. So mum disinfected that head. The dog was very good about it. But it's possible we're going a bit too far with our Coronavirus-avoidance.

In terms of how I'm doing, I'm mostly torn between buying every ridiculous thing I want online just to cheer myself up and make lockdown life a bit more interesting, and selling all my belongings and my hair and donating all the money to people who are struggling at the moment. It's difficult to know what the best thing to do is. Or what the future's going to look like. I'm still seeing people talking about making lists of all the restaurants they're going to eat at when lockdown's over, and positivity is important, but it's still sort of like 1) if those restaurants haven't gone out of business, 2) if you can even get a table, given that everyone is probably going to feel the same way, and now 3) if we're really allowed in restaurants even after we're out of lockdown, or they still want us to social distance more than that.

But I've discovered some shops in Leeds that sell some of the online perfume I've been seeing, so I'm planning to go to them when shops and leaving the house are a thing again. Unless they've gone bankrupt. But you do make plans, and there's no reason not to unless you actually see some evidence you can't do it.

This may be one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen. Also I'm very glad I don't wear make-up.

Rooster Teeth refunded me! That makes me feel like I can ever, ever subscribe to them again. Although obviously as soon as I do, I need to cancel my subscription, to turn off auto-renew. Still, it makes me feel not completely negative towards them. And now I can think about what else to do with that £50 next month :D