Tales of the Aggronaut

Value of a Hot Shower

February 13, 2018 by Belghast

This is going to be one of those posts that likely has no image… or at the very least a completely non-sequitur image. It always feels weird to say “own a house” when in truth the bank owns it and you are just paying it off very slowly. However that is in fact the correct term, and the biggest problem with that equation is that you are on the hook when things go horribly wrong. At this point our house has had most everything major replaced but there are still a few outliers that exist from when the house was built in 1979. Yesterday morning things went horribly wrong and the end result was me taking a very very very cold shower.

For a few weeks we had noticed reduced water pressure in the shower on the hot side and the fact that it was no longer blending the hot and cold water. This lead us to take very quick showers because the water reached scalding temperatures, but was something we more or less were living with. The goal was to somehow make it to spring break and then deal with it then as my wife could be around the house to schedule someone to come check it out. As of yesterday morning however we had no water pressure on the hot side and the only option was a very frosty shower experience, which I opted for… my wife being the smarter of us figured out some other solution.

Now we do have a shower upstairs in what is more or less the “cat bathroom” and where we keep the litter boxes. The only problem there is we have never actually used it and while I have this awesome Tardis themed shower curtain up there… we never actually got a proper shower liner to turn it into a functional experience. This has since been remedied in case we were stuck using that shower until we were able to sort out what was going on. The truth is when I was confronted with the ice cold north of a full on cold shower on a 15 degree outside day… I completely forgot about the upstairs option.

Our heating and air company also does plumbing work, so we opted to call them and see if they could work us in. I did have a fairly busy day of meetings, and my wife decided she was going to get a sub and take the afternoon off so she could deal with that. They originally had us scheduled for some time late afternoon around three or four. I got a call at 10:20 in the morning saying they had an availability if I could meet them there… so as a result I wound up rushing home and taking the afternoon off anyways. The fact that we were both ultimately going to be off at the same time was a bit of a blessing but at first it seemed annoyingly redundant. However with my wife needing to get a last minute sub, we didn’t want to cancel and ultimately screw someone out of a job.

When the plumber got here… he took one look at our 1979 original shower faucet and quite honestly didn’t want to touch it. In modern systems there is a water shutoff valve that goes to the shower and allows you to turn that off separately. In our house so many things were done in a less than intelligent manner, and as a result the only way to shut the shower off is to shut the entire water off to the house. Even this is its own hassle because we have no water main shutoff in the house and instead have to turn it off at the curb. Basically his concern was that he would get into the shower and be unable to fix it…. and have the whole thing basically disintegrate in the process leaving us with no water at all to the house.

His assessment is that we had something jammed inside the shower valve, and that it more than likely came from the hot water heater which in itself says proudly on the unit that it was made in 1974. His remedy was that we ultimately needed to replace the hot water heater to keep this from happening again, and replace the shower. The problem with the second part of that equation is that it would involve either tearing out the existing fiberglass shower surround… or ripping into the wall of our bedroom that backs up to the shower. They would be able to handle cutting the hole, installing a shutoff system and a new shower… but we would need to purchase our own shower fixtures and get someone to take care of putting in an access panel when they had finished.

This was less than a simple process because for the hot water heater… we had to schedule another person to come out and give us the estimate. Thankfully they could come out yesterday and around 1:30 or so they popped in for literally less than ten minutes and via an iPad app emailed us an estimate. Once you added everything up… the shower work, the hot water heater, bringing things up to code and getting the end product inspected it tallied roughly $3000. There was a lot of sticker shock in that equation as well given that a hot water heater at a big box store is in the $500-600 range.

This set us down an alternate path, because if we were looking to spend that sort of money… we wondered what just replacing the shower and having a contractor take care of all of it would cost us. My wife put out a message on Facebook and one of her friends that she trusts mentioned that her brother was a contractor. We called him to see if we could get an estimate on what it would take to just replace the downstairs shower completely given that we have never really liked it. It turned out that while he worked in other towns, he actually lived in our town and could swing by that afternoon.

Within a few minutes of him being there, he decided that we should just try and fix the problem before getting entangled in a bigger project. He balked that the plumber was unwilling to work on this unit and figured it was far better built than he had given it credit for. So he started dismantling the shower faucet all the while my wife and I were hoping things would end up being okay. He got everything taken apart and sure enough… there was a little bit of what looked like paint or maybe thin plastic that was jamming up the valve. With some tweezers he extracted it and then for good measure turned the water on to blow out any other debris.

This caused some minor flooding… but only because the water shot out so hard that it bounced off the back wall of the shower and out through the crack in the door and onto the floor. My wife and I hurried scrambled to get some towels to soak it up but in the grand scheme of things it was a minor hazard to deal with given that the problem was actually being fixed. It took a bit longer to reassemble than to take apart because lining up the screw holes was a little awkward. However within thirty minutes start to finish we had a working shower again.

The funny thing is… he didn’t want to take any money for the work he has just done. We had to basically force him to take some because ultimately his few minutes of time that he thought nothing about… saved us from having to deal with $3000 at that moment. This morning I took the best shower I have taken in years, and it is funny how much better a day goes when the little things like that are working as intended. I think the best part of yesterday is that we now have contact with a really excellent contractor and handyman type for when we need him in the future.

At some point we really would like to properly remodel the bathroom, and I am sure when we do we will give him another call. However for the moment he was absolutely our savior in being willing to take on something that scared the hell out of both of us. Sure we still need to replace a hot water tank and sure we probably should make it so that you can get into the shower from our bedroom via an access panel. All of those things though can now be carefully planned instead of pure blind reactionary mode, which is a huge positive as far as I am concerned.

A Social Weekend

February 12, 2018 by Belghast

It was a pretty great weekend as far as hunting monsters goes. I got to hang out with so many different groups of people and do so many varied things. On Friday night it was all about hanging out with Tam, Ash and Kodra as I was finally up late enough to allow our schedules to align. On Saturday it was all about hanging out with Pizza Maid, Wolfy and Rakuno… and then in a little pre-podcast gaming some more with Tam, Ash and Kodra. Then Sunday I streamed for a bit in the morning between editing two podcasts. Then in the evening I spent quite a bit of time in the evening running around with Sushi Geisha and Smashy doing some high rank egg birb killing among other things. The variety and quality of my company was absolutely the best.

The other thing that really happened this weekend is that I spent a ton of time hanging out with various groups of folks on twitch. I’ve never really acclimatized to that community but right now I am spending a significant amount of time with folks connected to the very awesome casual/positive Moogle’s Pom Tavern. They have all accepted me as one of their own and call me a streamer even though I barely qualify as one. Just to give some shout outs… some of the folks I spent time lurking or actively hanging out in are…

Right now my jam seems to be playing Monster Hunter on the 43 inch 4k monitor while trying to cram a bunch of windows on one of the 23 inch monitors. As a result a lot of the time I have spent soloing, has been hanging out in a twitch stream and occasionally throwing random comments. During the shenanigans of Saturday and Sunday I actually wound up on voice chat and as a result “on stream” with Pizza and Sushi. The world got many opportunities to watch me fail at longswording and miss attacks as monsters shifted on me in combat. It was a lot of fun and I need to sort out a time when I can stream for myself more regularly. I had a lot of fun with the little bit that I did this weekend and the whole Sunday morning is starting to turn into a routine.

As far as Monster Hunter itself… I have now progressed into High Rank hunts but have not done a whole lot of them. I’ve taken down Pukei Pukei which is the gatekeeper of sorts to unlock High Rank, and then taken down Kulu-Ya-Ku a bunch of times to farm bits so I could upgrade to this crazy two handed scimitar of sorts called Last Dance I. I am wearing a mishmash of gear because I basically went to the workshop and crafted whatever the hell I could as soon as I hit high rank. As a result I have 1 piece of Zorah Magdaros gear, 2 pieces of High Rank Bone and 2 pieces of High Rank Alloy gear. This shockingly has wound up being a fairly reasonable set of gear to run around and do stuff with, and the added defense helped a lot as compared to the amount of damage I was taking during the Pukei Pukei fight.

I could go into a bunch of detail about the various hunts I did, but for this morning I am not. The weekend as a whole was all about hanging out with various groups of people for me. That is always the problem I have when it comes to online gaming. There are so many different groups that I want to be hanging out with. I spent a lot of the weekend as a sort of fill in, but still had a blast in doing so. Right now the timing for me is just weird in actually hanging with the AggroChat crew given that the majority are now on the west coast. On most nights they are starting to get active around 9 pm… as I am starting to wind down and prep to head to bed. This has made organizing anything in a time other than the weekend a pretty fraught experience.

The whole grouping experience in Monster Hunter does not make this easier, given that for much of the weekend folks were having trouble joining specific sessions. I know last night we kept trying to get a 4th in to help them with some quests… but the sessions kept timing out. What I crave the most for Monster Hunter World is some form of a viable friends list, with the ability to invite to parties from it… and even more importantly have a Diablo 3 style “request to be invited” system. I hope as time passes that the whole cludge that is grouping in this game improves. That said… the core experience is compelling enough that I can look past all of that nonsense as I obsess about getting monster bits to make awesome weapons and outfits.

Apex Predators

February 9, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I participated in a little bit of non-game related nonsense. Over the Christmas break I rearranged my set up so that I am essentially sharing a 43 inch 4k display for both console and PC gaming. I still have access to the PC via the secondary monitor to the side, but the main display will be showing my PS4. The idea was that this would give me access to my proper mic while playing console games and allow me to hang out on teamspeak or discord while playing. The only problem there is that my only sound option for console gaming… has been to have it play through the television speakers, which means while streaming… it gets picked up by my microphone. My alternate solution was to try and string a usb headset to my PS4 while playing but it was less than optimal and I didn’t have a long enough cord to route it around where it was not in the way.

So I set forth with a mission… figure out a way to pipe the input from my television into my PC. The television only has optical toslink out and the pc has a 3.5 mm mini jack for input, which meant I needed some sort of a bridge to make the connection work. After some googling I stumbled across this little device that will convert a digital input… like toslink to an analog signal like RCA/Mini. After a bunch of fiddling and some rewiring I got it set up… and once I set my system to “listen” to the line in port… I had console audio coming in through my PC sound card. This left me with the problem of needing some way to have a microphone for PSN chat.

After some rummaging I found my first Blue microphone… the Nessie and decided to give it a shot. This is the point where I am thankful I have a rudamentary system of storage boxes because I needed to find some way of stringing a micro usb cord from the other side of my monitor all the way around the back of my desk and over to my PS4. The final solution was an old samsung charging cable combined with an amazon basics usb extender, but after some fiddling it worked. Now I can comfortably swap between PC gaming and PS4 gaming without having to grab a new headset or do any manipulation. While it doesn’t seem like much… it felt like a major victory to me last night.

As far as my night in Monster Hunter…. I spent a lot of time doing minor content while watching Sushi’s stream and chatting with the other folks in channel on my second monitor. This is the other use case I have found for this setup is letting me hang out on twitch while playing console games, which is a good deal of fun. The only negative is I try and cram discord, slack, hangouts and a twitch window on a 23 inch monitor… that seems ridiculously tiny next to the 43 inch I am playing the game on. I’ve been on this mission to repair my cash flow problem and as a result I have been doing a bunch of investigations that reward around the 4000-5000 zenny mark. Essentially there are two wants right now… being able to craft a new sword from the egg bird line to see how well it works with its high affinity rating. The other is to craft a new set of gear but I am sorta up in the air as to what to go with.

Basically in the coming evenings I should really start doing focused hunts and going after specific monsters to get parts. I hate fighting the Radobaan, but right now… it is one of my favorite armor sets. I need Radobaan parts to complete the weapon I am shooting for as well… so in theory it means in the near future I am going to start going after the tar dragon with seriousness. It was a pretty straight forward fight, but was just annoying getting good hits on it and knocking off bits of the bone armor. I am bad at actually seeking groups for things and instead just end up piddling around on my own most of the time. Regardless… my current set of armor feels like it is starting to be a little dated.

When I finally got back to doing more serious content, I picked up on the quest line that asked me to go to the bottom of the Rotten Vale. I am not exactly sure what I expected down there, but the supposed bottom floor is a lot more survivable than the one that Great Girros roams around. There seemed to be way fewer poison clouds going on, and not much in the way of annoying adds. While down there I ran into my favorite character that I have no clue what she is called… but a wiki is telling me she is called the Field Master. I question if she is actually another hunter, or if instead she is just one of the handlers that decided to break out on her own.

This lead to the appearance of a monster called Odogoron that was honestly one of the more annoying fights I have dealt with in awhile. Much like Legiana, this one can deal a lot of damage in a really short amount of time and I wound up fainting a few times because I simply was not watching my health bar as closely as I should. The other problem I ran into is this thing is insanely fast, so the only times I could really just go to town on it were when my palico had it distracted or I had blinded it with a flash pod. The rest of the time I was constantly in a state of trying to make sure it was not about to turn on me and decimate my life bar. I am not even sure how this works, but once I cut off its tail it seemed to be super susceptible to being knocked down which allowed me to unleash some spirit blade combos.

After wrapping that fight up, I decided to keep going with the story rather than retreating into a chill expedition. After some tracking around I found myself on a quest to essentially kill the Apex predators of the Ancient Forest and the Wildspire Wastes… aka Rathalos and Diablos. I did not have the energy in me to start either of those so I went back to investigations for awhile. I now have two quests in my log ready for me to start the hunts for these two big beasts… and I am guessing I am not terribly far from starting high rank once I knock them out of the skies. I really could use Rathalos parts because I believe they unlock some interesting crafting options. Still very much enthralled by this game and looking forward to venturing deeper into it.

Backlog Madness

February 8, 2018 by Belghast

The image does not necessarily go with today’s post, but it happened to be in the recently uploaded images that I have not used on my blog so it is seeing some duty here. I had one of those nights where I attempted to go to bed early… and just wound up waking up every few hours leading to very fragmented sleep. However coffee heals all wounds and in the grand scheme of things I seem relatively cognizant and “mostly functional”. As a result I don’t really have much that is pressing to talk about this morning so I thought I would venture off into the arena of things I want to do but may not actually ever do. I am really great at coming up with ideas… I am pretty horrible at actually following through with half of them. I only really feel guilty about this… when money was spent to “prepare” for doing the thing.

One of those long reaching goals is to actually utilize this website that I was introduced called Grouvee. It seems to have been designed as a way of tracking the games you have beaten… which in truth is not a thing I give a shit about in the least. I am bad at finishing games. I will often times get to within a few hours of finishing and then just lose all desire to continue playing it, because I know that when I actually finish… the experience will be over. What the site does that I am interested in however is that it has the functionality to import all of the games in your steam library and track weather or not you have spent any time playing it. It also has the ability to create shelves to divide up your games, and do manual data entry for the services that aren’t steam.

The challenge is that right now because of circumstance more than desire… I have a collection of games spread out among multiple storefront platforms. The vast majority of my games are on Steam and have an exceedingly bloated number thanks to the fact that I tend to be a habitual purchaser of Humble Bundles. In second place is Playstation Network because I have been a Plus member for several years now and use the website to claim all of the games at once… regardless if I actually intend on playing them. In third place would be Microsoft Xbox Live or whatever the hell they are calling that platform these days… in which I have been similarly nabbing the games with gold titles every month. Then we drop down to probably Good Ole Games or GOG as they prefer to be called these days… which used to be the only place to buy a bunch of classic titles I wanted to revisit… and also is the home of my Witcher 3 copy due to a video card promotion. Lastly we have Origin… the network no one actually wants to use but has to if they care about Bioware games.

There are two main reasons why I care about this website at all. The first is… if I can ever get everything imported into the system I think it might be really cool to start using the [Tell Me What to Play] button when I am feeling lost and uncertain of what sounds good that day. I have 300 MBps internet, so can download pretty much any game within a few minutes and it might be interesting to force myself to play some of that backlog. The second reason why I care about this site… is I am wondering if maybe just maybe I could figure out a way to retrieve my now playing list on my blog from the playing shelf on Grouvee. I’ve not sorted out how I plan on going about that, but if I do… I will be sure to post a how to.

The site as a whole has been described as a “Goodreads” for games, and that seems pretty apt. I know I originally was introduced to the site through Jasyla who I believe actually uses this site for its intended purpose of tracking what she has finished. For me… it might just be useful to let me realize that I already have a game through PS+ or Games with Gold and I really should not buy it when it is being sold for $4 on steam. In theory since I left it off the list… I should add in my physical game libraries and the digital games I have on the Switch and 3DS. Mostly I have tried to move away from physical games, in part because I just like having whatever I want available and on tap without having to swap a cartridge or disc. If Grouvee seems like a useful site you might check it out… and feel free to friend me.