ELSEWHERE

Predictably adventure might need to wait a day because, also predictably, the cats are determined to not let me sleep

Unfortunately the forecast for the week is not promising

Possibly. I'm just up all night, go out when everything is first opening, and sleep when I get home

Change of plans, spurred not only by the fact that everything up in that area opens at inconvenient hours and in the wrong order but also because I double-checked and the office supply does not appear to actually have the film in stock, and I care more about the film than I do my library card right now. So I'll be taking the train over to the non-chain camera supply and if they don't have it, to a nearby pharmacy (that does claim to have it in stock), and I'll do library card (and conveyor-belt food) a different day

And then probably come right home and go to sleep

Boy what a series of annoyances!!

So I did successfully get to the atm and put some cash in my account, and around then I discovered that the soles on BOTH my shoes are coming off, so then it became a tense race on whether or not I would finish my errands and get home before my shoes fell apart

Got to the camera supply place with little issue, though the pedestrian infrastructure around it is of course laughable (I hate every time there's an intersection with n-1 crosswalks, fuck you let me take the shortest route to my destination, the cars have air conditioning, I do not). I also possibly have started noticing people using their hazard lights to park in places that they shouldn't be parking, which is very not cool

Anyway, store was fine, I walked in hoping to be able to ask for what I was looking for but no one was manning the register, and also it was Super hot in there despite it being like 70 outside at that point. But I found the rack of fujifilm and grabbed a couple boxes of instax (note that I didn't say what format, this will be important later), bought it and started heading home

At the train station there was a man with The Most Authoritative Voice I've Ever Heard, talking to another guy and explaining how the train system works, and I thought it was a Confrontation at first but no the guy seems to just talk like that. And I took the train home and when I got off a woman almost ran me over with her bicycle because she was riding on the platform along the side of the train, you know, where people are disembarking, and then she had the nerve to tell me to watch out

Got home, started to get settled, got the film out to load the camera and take some more practice shots, and that is when I realised that I had grabbed Instax Wide instead of Instax Square, and unfortunately the camera I have takes Instax Square. The film is too expensive to just eat the cost, but I didn't want to be out for another two hours (with my shoes falling apart), so I decided to eat a lyft ride instead.

The circumstances (and the cost) were annoying but the man giving me a ride was very nice and very talkative (he's been living in Rancho Cordova for 20 years but grew up in Detroit and is considering moving to Arizona (the first thing everyone says is how hot it is there, the second is that at least it's a dry heat)). He also waited in the parking lot for me to run in and get the refund -- which the guy at the counter almost wouldn't give me because it's against store policy, but 'since it's only been an hour', so it's a good thing I went right away. They turned out to not have any Instax Square film, so I left empty-handed and went back home once again.

I considered doing the run to CVS before coming home but decided to just cut my losses, which is good because when I looked them up online again they also don't have any Instax Square -- which is wild because I swear to god when I checked this morning they did, and it's not just that all of the formats have really similar packaging. I remember there being multiple Instax options, and now suddenly there's just the one and it's out of stock? And absolutely no one in the area is carrying it (well, except for a Best Buy on the other side of the city). Very strange, someone is running around ahead of me buying up all the Instax Square film.

Anyway, so I asked ash to use Erik's Amazon Prime to order me some to get here tomorrow -- I know, I hate to use Amazon and I hate to use any kind of fast shipping, but dang it I want to play with my camera, and I'm using my birthday money for this so it's my biiirrthday I'm a little birthday boooyyyy

That also was very strange because when ash went to check out Amazon changed the listing to one $10 more than what I intended to buy, I suppose because the prime shipping option didn't exist on that one, and then there was a whole rigamarole about transferring said birthday money to ash's account, but it's all done now, the adventure is over, and I'm going to get some sleep before ash gets home.

To top it all off with another disappointment, I also ordered a cheap, expired cartridge of polaroid film, because when I looked up if expired carts were still usable everything just told me that they would work but have unexpected weirdnesses (like unevenness, incorrect colours, &c) in development and that sounded like fun and like something ash might be able to use for something. I was pretty excited to try it out! But it turns out that expired carts don't usually have enough battery power¹ to actually work, so when I popped it into the camera, nothing happened. This is super obvious in hindsight and I should have thought about it, but none of my searches mentioned that, just the development stuff.

A different site I found says you can take a new cart with power, after you've already used all the film in it, and transfer the expired film to that cart and it should work, which I'll have to try. Wish I didn't have to! But at least I'll functionally get twice as much film out of it

 
ash and I also finished playing through Spectator and were disappointed by the "endings", but that's forgiveable since the story mode seems to have been added on post hoc and the game itself is very fun and well done. We'll have to try the sequel, at some point

 
Anyway, now I'm going to go play Satisfactory with Dave, which hopefully will harbour no disappointments.

_{¹An extremely cool thing about vintage polaroid cameras is that the power comes from the film cart and not the camera itself! Unfortunately that's probably a reason it's more expensive than other instant brands}

Good Satisfactory-ing! Primarily what I did today -- after I fixed the broken train lines from last week and set up Another station and train line -- was write out how all the stations connect, and then wrote out a train schedule so that every station has at least three trains visit it and every commuter train stops at at least four stations. And then I wrote out the schedule with the train's identifying colours, so we can maybe use it to get around easier

Here is how to get around our Satisfactory map-

Alan Dracula (blue and silver):

• > Grand Central
  > Gasland
  > The Scenic Route
  > Mirror Dimension

Mr. (chrome) & Mrs. Man (copper):

• > Grand Central
  > Rad City
  > Less Rad City
  > Mirror Dimension

Peabody (blue and yellow):

• > Grand Central
  > The Scenic Route
  > Mirror Dimension
  > Your Ass
  > My Ass

Bruce (pink and hot pink):

• > Rad City
  > Less Rad City

Jeff (red and yellow):

• > Your Ass
  > My Ass

Roxie (pink and green):

• > Grand Central
  > Gasland

Train (silver and orange):

• > Grand Central
  > Mirror Dimension
  > Your Ass
  > My Ass
  > Gasland
  > Less Rad City
  > The Scenic Route
  > Rad City

 
Jeff, Bruce, and Roxie are all workhorses that transport Stuff back and forth between two stations, so they don't roam

My plan next week is to fix some of the train tracks that suffered from the game's physics &c during construction, smooth them out and make them nicer. I tested a method before we logged off today and it worked pretty well, so that should itself go smoothly.

This is how everything connects:

Grand Central

• -> Gasland
  -> Rad City
  -> Scenic Route
  -> Mirror Dimension
  -> Your Ass

Gasland

• -> Grand Central

Rad City

• -> Less Rad City

Less Rad City

• -> Grand Central

Scenic Route

• -> Mirror Dimension

Mirror Dimension

• -> Your Ass

Your Ass

• -> My Ass

My Ass

• -> Your Ass
  -> Grand Central

Could certainly use some more connections between stations that don't go through Grand Central