Leap Year 2016

Happy Leap Year! February 29 ... you only get to say THAT once every 4 years or so. LOL! I had a really bad cold yesterday & didn't do a whole lot. What I did manage to do, I barely remember. I had lots of sinus pain for the entire weekend & even slept on & off through a couple episodes of Stargate SG-1 last night. I played Minecraft, but only for a very short time. Yesterday was public server day & I logged into the Raw Minecraft server only to find that my chest had been raided & some of my path was destroyed. I asked the owner if there are any protections & he said yes, but I would have had to live much farther out from spawn to have them. Oh well. I placed a sign on my house saying "Free house" & logged out for the last time. Then I tried another server I had been on before called TreeHome & decided to move. I abandoned my 2-story home & walked to a new location. I found an ocelot, tamed it & now have an orange tabby cat. I went mining, went fishing, & processed everything. Before I could build though, hubby was ready to go out so we went to Sicily's & for some slices of pizza, went grocery shopping, & then came home & watched TV for the rest of the evening. I could have easily gone right back to bed as soon as I got up yesterday, & really wanted to go to bed as soon as we got back from the store, but it was way too early for hubby to even think of going o bed, so we stayed up until 2:a. 2 hours later than usual since his new job. I was SO tired by then! I feel much better though today, so ... yay! :) Minecraft 1.9 has officially been released & I've downloaded & run the new Minecraft 1.9 server. I now have a 1.7.10 server with mods & plugins, a 1.8.9 server with plugins, & now a 1.9 vanilla server. I can't wait for DynMap to come out with an update to run with 1.9! Have a great day everyone! :D

February 28, 2016

Good morning everyone! :) I added 4 videos to YouTube yesterday & my son was nice & played Rummy 500 with me while they were uploading. Today's blog is going to be really short because all day yesterday & now still today I'm in pain. Sinus issues ... the left side of my face hurts like hell. Makes concentration a little difficult. I was really hoping it wouldn't be hurting anymore when I woke up this morning, but no luck. I'll add yesterday's screenshots & then I'll see you all tomorrow. Have a great day!

Minecraft 1.9-pre4:

 Sims 3 Autumn Road:

Minecraft 1.9-pre4 Let's Play Day 1

Sims 4 Let's Play Day 1

Autumn Road Sims 3 Let's Play Day 1

Space Engineers Let's Play Day 1

February 27, 2016

Good morning everyone! I've given up on the fame collection & playing a different game every day. I just wasn't enjoying any of them. In the time that I've been doing this (a few weeks now), I've only found ONE game that I really liked. Just one. That's a whole lot of money & time wasted on games that turn out to be boring, stupid, I can't figure out how to make ANYTHING in the game work, look like they were from the early 80s, etc. I'm just going to stick with what I already know & love. A very small collection of games. Minecraft, Sims, Civ5, etc. No, I won't be finding anything new that I love because I'm not looking. Looking is expensive & time consuming. Speaking of Sims ... I tried to play Sims 3 yesterday on the brand new PC, which, by the way, can easily play, stream, & record simultaneously. I've done it with Minecraft & there was NO lag at all. NONE! Not even with the game I was playing being a home-run server with mods & plugins! WOO!! Anyway, Sims 3. I have almost every expansion pack & a ton of DLC that I've collected over the years, so I started downloading it all at 4:p yesterday & it took a solid 6 hours. Now we have better Internet than we used to, so it would have taken days on AT&T speeds. The good news is that I now have Sims completely downloaded & ready to go. The bad news is that I didn't get to play it at all & won't have an opportunity until next Friday. :/ I played my 1.8.9 server yesterday but forgot to grab a screenshot. I love the area my house is in, but I can't find any plugin that lets me use the /back command, so my Random Location plugin is hard to use. I have to go into creative mode & fly all the way back home each time I use it. Other than that, I love the streetlight plugin that I have that automatically turns all the lights on at dusk & turns them all off again at sunrise. :D

February 26, 2016

Good morning! Yesterday I tested out gaming for the 1st time on the new PC. It went great. Better than great! I played Minecraft 1.7.10 modded WITH plugins on my server while live streaming & there was NO lag. I mean zip, zero, none! So smooth! I'm really REALLY happy with the new PC. :)

I also finished an afghan yesterday. I've been working on this one on & off for YEARS & it's finally complete. I bought it as a kit & hadn't realized that it was using such thin yarn. I always preferred working with thicker yarn (Red Heart) for this reason. This was like a multi-year doily. Sheesh! LOL!!

February 25, 2016

Good morning! I'm up bright & early (for me) & loving it. I have a lot to do today as far as setting up the new computer. I haven't gotten to test out how fast it is yet, as I'm still just downloading & installing stuff. I'm mostly done though, so hopefully today we'll see how it plays. I think the last thing I'm going to install is Rainmeter. After that, I'll install things as I need / want them (such as the games). The PC arrived at 4:p yesterday which is about the time I expected it. I was waiting for UPS all day & sure enough, I leave the room, go into the bathroom, hear the doorbell, come running out & there's a $2k PC sitting on the front porch in a huge box with CyberPowerPC stamped all over it. What if I were out? They just left a $2k PC sitting on the porch & left? My neighborhood isn't a bad one, but it's full of teens that know what a gaming PC is & although I'm sure they're mostly good kids, there's a certain level of temptation that I don't want to test. There's got to be some protocol for that ... hide it behind a bush or something. Sheesh! Even on the box it says "Computer Equipment Inside ... Signature Required" or something along those lines. Ring the bell & run? I usually always meet him at his truck. I see him, I hear him, the dogs bark ... but because I was in another room (and the dog follows me everywhere), I had no idea he was even here until he rang the bell. Anyway, no issues setting up the PC. Windows was saying I didn't have a legit copy & wouldn't let me personalize anything until after I put the key in from the sticker on the PC, but other than that everything went very smoothly. Until tomorrow ... have a great day everyone!

February 24, 2016 New PC arrives today!

The new PC arrives today & I'm finding it very difficult to do the things I should be doing. The anticipation is driving me insane. I keep staring out the window looking for the UPS truck. I'll try not to kiss the UPS driver when he gets here. I know once the PC gets here nothing more will get done today other than setting up the PC way into the night. That's why part of me says take the whole day off ... but the other part of me says to get as much done as possible before the timer hits zero & the truck stops out front. This PC is going to be great. The specs are amazing & more than double what I have now. My current PC will be inherited by my husband who is going to turn it into a server. God knows it's got enough drive bays in it. It was the largest case I could find at the time. A Cooler Master case with more than enough space to add anything I could want. Now, 6 years later, I find I don't really need all that space. No one uses floppy drives anymore, I haven't touched the DVD/CD drive in years (I don't even think it works anymore), & a single hard drive is a couple terabytes easy ... so ... nope, don't need all that space. This new PC was centered around the processor & video card. Size of the case had nothing to do with it. I feel like a kid the night before Christmas & Santa is driving a brown truck.

February 23, 2016

Good morning! Great morning this morning! I woke much earlier than I normally do & got a 1.8.9 Minecraft server running locally. I now have both 1.7.10 & 1.8.9 working home servers with plugins! The 1.7.10 server has mods too! Not bad ... early morning awake AND alert! I rewrote my schedule a little yesterday. I changed Minecraft so that I play a different version every day: Starting on Monday; Earth Mod, Modpack, Realms, 1.7.10, 1.8.9, 1.9, & on Sunday a public server. YouTube gaming video is now only on Sundays instead of daily. Twitch live stream gaming is on Fridays. When the new PC gets here tomorrow, I can live stream my Minecraft every day without lag. WOO! Have a great day everyone! :)

Path of Exile Let's Play Day 1

February 22, 2016

Good morning! Not a bad day at all yesterday. Hubby & I went out to lunch at DQ & then later that evening I logged into a brand new (to me) Minecraft server called Gamealition. I found a spot to build in a savanna right next to a partially built copy of Mount Falcon Manor. I love Mount Falcon, I've built it half a dozen times myself, so it was easy to recognize. I commented about it in chat & just about when I was done building my starter house, management said that the person who was building Mount Falcon had abandoned it & hasn't been on the server in almost a year. They gave the build to me to finish & now I'm building Mount Falcon once again. Even though it's partially built already, it's going to take a very long time as it's absolutely a huge build & takes a massive amount of resources. It'll be beautiful when I'm done though. :) I did some work on the roof last night & next time I'm on I'll add the round corner piece, keep working on the roof, keep adding to the floor & eventually start adding the 2nd floor & windows. Did I mention it's a massive build? Sheesh! I never thought I'd be building this one again ... especially in survival mode!

Hell Yeah Let's Play Day 1

February 21, 2016

Good morning everyone! The day before yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far. I know this because the temperature afghan I'm crocheting had its warmest colors of the year so far for the low, average, & high temperatures. Yay! Not a whole lot to talk about today. Yesterday was a slow day. No gaming & a lot of "discussion" about the new PC I bought. The only thing I really got done yesterday was that temperature afghan & some knitting on the warmest sweater I've ever made while watching Gladiator. Cloudy today with thunder storms in the forecast, so we may or may not lose power later. Ah, I love my laptop! Losing power doesn't mean no PC. :) Have a great day everyone!

February 20, 2016

Good afternoon all! I tried out a new (to me) game yesterday called Chaos Reborn. I liked it ... turn-based strategy mixed with a grid pattern for movement & cards like Magic. It was pretty cool. I only tried out the 1st of several tutorials, but I'm going to like this one, I can tell already. I logged into the Rehab Minecraft server which like most all servers I'm on, have announced a reset once 1.9 is officially released in a week. The result of this is many people not logging in anymore because they don't want to waste their time working on something that's going to vanish in a week when the world is restarted. Understandable, but I logged in anyway because exploring & building is what I do & the reset won't stop me from doing that even if it's the day before the reset. I was alone on the server. I went mining, processed & sorted everything I collected, started tearing down the upper part of my 2nd floor in order to add a rare 3rd floor, then just stopped. Not because of the looming reset, but because I made the mistake of trying out the 1.9 -Pre2 snapshot & it's SO different! I can't help it, I want to play that now. So I logged out, created 1 new world after another & didn't like any of them, then finally said "this is it. I'm going to start ONE new world with a seed that's specific to ME & play that." Wouldn't you know it I got lucky & it was a NICE world! I know ALL worlds are nice since they're infinite & eventually they all have what you're looking for somewhere out there, but I have a thing for 0,0 & what can be found NEAR ground zero. It's my starting point always. I started playing my special "me" seed in 1.9 & once I had gathered all my materials, I was hiding in a hole just underground processing everything in safety when I heard a horse. Odd, I don't remember there being any horses in the area. Then I heard what sounded like 2 horses. Again ... odd. So I decided to go up & take a look. Well THAT was a mistake. There were FOUR skeletons with enchanted bows riding FOUR skeleton horses. I almost had a heart attack. I ran back down into my hole, plugged the top with dirt & haven't been back out since. I've heard of those skeleton horses, but I had never SEEN one in any of my games in the 2 years I've been playing Minecraft 7 days a week. Then suddenly there are FOUR of them?! Just lounging out right where I plan to go up & start building my house? Aw come on!! REALLY?! Sheesh!

Chaos Reborn Let's Play Tutorial 1

February 19, 2016 Computer Upgrade

I love my PC ... it's a custom-built gaming PC & was on the pricey side. I've got the best Keyboard there is, the G910, & 2 large flatscreen TVs that I use as dual monitors. When it comes to my computer, I didn't spare any cost because it's where I spend most of my waking time. It didn't make sense to not have the best. If you spend all day in your car, you make sure it's a really good one. All day on your phone? You get the best. Quality & reliability matter when your whole day is spent relying on an object. The only problem is, my amazing PC is now about 6 years old & even though I still love it, it was starting to have issues keeping up with me. I game, I live stream, I record videos. I can do any 1 of those 3 things effortlessly ... but as soon as I combine any 2 of them, my PC starts to choke. If I attempt all 3, it flat out has a stroke. It was time to bite the bullet & upgrade. I've had a pre-built off the shelf PC & it was horrible. All of my PCs except for that one have been home-built. This new PC is the very 1st pre-built gaming PC I've ever bought. It may not be the best, but it was the best I could afford at the moment & will do what I need it to do for a long time to come. Hopefully another 6 years. :)

This beauty has: 

• 3.3GHz Intel Core i7-5820K processor with 15MB L3 cache
• Windows 10 operating system
• 2TB SATA hard drive
• 128GB solid-state drive
• 16GB DDR4 system memory; expandable to 64GB
• DVD/CD player/burner
• NVIDIA GTX960 graphics
• High Definition Audio
• Has 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 14 USB ports, HDMI output, DVI port and headphone/microphone jack
• Includes keyboard, mouse, restore disc and power cord
• Approx. 9"W x 23-3/4"D x 22-3/4"H

It'll be here on the 29th. WOO!!!!

Battlefield Bad Company 2 Let's Play Day 1

February 18, 2016 Minecraft 1.9 release!

Good morning! Yesterday I saw that the Minecraft 1.9 pre-1 was released & 1.9 will be finally released on the 25th of this month. This means that most servers I'm on will be starting over. Most have announced brand new worlds with the upgrade to 1.9 & I'm just fine with that. A lot of people hate restarts. They hate losing all they have built. Me, I just love starting over ... especially in Minecraft. In fact, I got so excited about it that I wanted to have a plan ... a different plan than the one I've been going by on all the servers. A new build style. So I loaded up a new single-player world last night & tried something new. From now on, I'll be building 8-sided houses that I can add onto on any of the 8 sides, making it more interesting than the 4-sided boxes I was building & adding onto on 1 of only 4 sides. The 4-sided ones looked more like traditional homes & the rooms varied in size depending on the materials I had on-hand at the time, but this 8-sided design is 1-size only. 11x11 at it's center. Now this might get boring pretty quick since there's no variation in size, but the good news is that I know exactly how much of every material I'll need before I even start. For example, the floor will require 98 slabs, the walls require exactly 112 blocks of the main block, 58 blocks for the trim, 17 glass blocks, 8 glass panes, etc. It should still be interesting. I have 4 directions to explore, 8 directions to add-on, 12 different possible rooms to add & I've removed things like dining rooms & living rooms as they're pretty, but absolutely useless in Minecraft. The only rooms I left in that had no purpose were the fireplace, patio, porch, & screened porch ... just because I like how they look enough to keep them there even though they serve no purpose. The starter "module" looks like this:

Every module has a lot of space for anything I may want to put in it, so it should keep me busy for a while. The one above was built in creative mode just to see how it looks & get an item count on everything including the torches. The only trouble I see myself having is with the roof. Connecting the roof got tricky on the 4-sided boxes after a few add-ons ... this is going to be a nightmare trying to make it come out looking good. I always hated roofing, but this? Ugh! It was annoying to make this roof in creative, imagine in survival without flying? It's the only part I'm not looking forward to in this project. While playing 1.9 last night I noticed new features. New sounds that opening & closing doors make, new sounds while swinging the sword at an enemy, new visuals while fighting an enemy, & the boats are cool. They have ores now & you need to use the keyboard to navigate instead of simply looking in the direction you want to go. You can also go right up to the land without the boat breaking apart when you hit something solid. It also looks more like a boat now instead of a boat that's half full of water & sinking. LOL! I like that they're different colors too depending on the type of wood used to build it. I tested out a birch boat last night & it's staying at the shore where I left it & hasn't floated off on my yet. I'm sure there are a lot of new changes that I'll notice once I start playing. New blocks too!

Golden Axe Let's Play Day 1

February 17, 2016

Good morning everyone! Not much going on yesterday. I logged into Unified Gaming & added onto my house ... even found a wolf & tamed it.

As for my server, the Millenaire village was finally finished. 2 problems though. 1st they ran out of space & the usual fix for that wasn't working. 2nd, the terminal started going nuts .. several entries per second & I couldn't stop it. It started as soon as I logged in & didn't stop until I logged out. I shut the server down, restarted it & logged back in several times, each with the same result. I googled the error & came up with nothing. That was a 1st ... ZERO hits in google? From what I could gather, I'm guessing the rapid error messages were being generated by something in Millenaire. I hated to do it, but I had to kill that world. Something glitched & I had no idea how to fix it. My other world, without the Millenaire village in it worked fine still. I created a new world last night, near a Millenaire village & glitch free (for now). It took 2 days to complete the other Millenaire village & I'm reluctant to go through all of that again, but I don't really have a choice. This village is a tiny bit farther away, so I won't worry about them building over my house like in the last one. I'm guessing they fixed that though since they built right up TO my house but not into it. Either that or I was extremely lucky with the placement of my house & was JUST outside their boundary. I was next to a Japanese village in the glitched game, this time I believe I'm next to a Mayan village.We'll see how the new game goes & how long I can go before it glitches (hopefully it won't). The glitch didn't start until the village was as completed as it was going to get, so maybe if I don't complete this village? I don't know. I don't have a screenshot because I haven't built anything yet. I had just finished my mining expedition last night, so the building will happen today.

Have a wonderful day!

Garry's Mod Let's Play Day 1

February 16, 2016

Good morning! :) Yesterday I tried out the game Syndicate. It was made in 1993 & it was OK I guess. I tried to log into the Sheep & Creeper Minecraft server & they were gone. Another server bites the dust. I logged into a different one instead, CrepitusMC. That little house with the red roof on the island is mine. It's partially hidden behind my neighbor's tall build. I added a basement yesterday which has windows facing out into the ocean underwater. Very relaxing down there. I also swapped out the acacia trees for my favorite spruce trees & added spruce trim to my house. From now on the roof will be done in stone brick & spruce instead of stone brick & acacia.

After that I got started on my new world on my server with the now working Millenaire mod. I built a starter house with an attached greenhouse & then started concentrating on the Millenaire village next to me. I want the village completed because I don't want us to smack into each other later on. If their village is finished I won't have to worry about them building over my build.

Have a great day everyone!

February 15, 2016

Good morning everyone! Today is the day that hubby & I met 24 years ago. We spent Valentine's Day gaming ... separately. LOL! He played Battlefield 4 & I figured out why Millenaire wasn't working on my server. Once I fixed it, I had to start a new world so I could hopefully have a Millenaire village somewhere near my base. I must have created dozens of worlds, deleted them & tried again. I finally found a world I loved. Beautiful ... just the right biomes near spawn, a Taiga where my base will go (I love building with spruce trees), & a Millenaire village really close to my base. I mean very close! Eye shot from where my home will be! It's not a Norman village, but it'll do. :) Hubby & I went out late in the evening & grabbed a Valentine's Day breakfast at McDonald's & then came home & binge watched TV on Hulu until 4:a. I'm running on only 4 hours sleep right now, but the good news is, I'll be able to go to bed early tonight. See you all tomorrow & have a great day!

Valentine's Day 2016

Good afternoon & Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Yesterday was pretty good. I watched Westworld ... a movie I had seen a LONG time ago & hated, but I didn't hate it that much this time around. I learned that Google+ also doesn't like being loaded in a frame (just like facebook) &then hubby & I went out & had a nice lunch at Arby's. Yesterday's YouTube video was on a game called Big Pharma. Not my thing, I tried out the 1st tutorial. After that I streamed Minecraft to Twitch for a few hours ... 1st on the LumiaCraft server:

And then on my custom modded home server:

Have a great Valentine's Day everyone!

Big Pharma Day 1

February 13, 2016

Wow, yesterday was a bit FUBARd. The Internet went out for 2 hours, essentially shutting me down for that long, then the movie I sat down to watch turned out to be 3½ hours, so I ditched that since that would have ended the day making it 5½ hours of day passing between the Internet & movie. Now I have 2 rows of the temperature afghan to crochet today & since hubby wants to see that movie I skipped yesterday, hopefully we'll watch it today & I can catch up on the afghan. Then I tried to work on my personal Website which uses frames & I learned that facebook doesn't like to be loaded into a frame. I didn't feel like messing with it for the remainder of the day so I went ahead & let it open fullscreen & suck people out of my Website. If the want back, hopefully they'll know how to use the back button. LOL! Then it was on to my live Twitch feed for the week. I Learned that I HATE one of the games I have (actually several so far) & can't stand the fact that I have to buy all these games just to find out that I really like 1 out of 7 of them. What a waste of money. I wish finding new games was cheaper. Anyway, the game I played for MORE than 15 minutes this week was ARK: Survival Evolved. It reminds me a lot of Minecraft, but with much better graphics & dinosaurs ... that killed me ... again & again. I still really like the game though. 1st one this entire week that I've liked enough to play for hours. As I said, I've spent a lot of money on games & after 7, I really liked ONE. Ugh. Anyway, while the Internet was down I spent a lot of time on my Minecraft server since now that it's run locally I don't need Internet to play:

My other server for the day was Goximo where I added a nice patio to my riverside home (river is behind me in the screenshot):

Have a great day everyone!

February 12, 2016

Good morning! Yesterday I worked on the temperature & kit afghans while watching

In December 1914, an unofficial Christmas truce on the Western Front allows soldiers from opposing sides of the First World War to gain insight into each other's way of life.

I added a Steam game to my library:

Spoko & Poko: Drop in to the world of two friendly beetles: relaxed Spoko and angry friend Poko. They need your help to transport a ball to their cottage. Are you ready to help them? Remember to collect all diamonds on the way! 

Move the trolley and bounce the ball collecting points and diamonds. Then put the ball into the lower trolley. It is the only way to keep the treasures you collected before. When you collect all diamonds, you will go to the next level. 

There is enough fuel in the trolley to bounce the ball a fixed number of times. Try to plan your bounces in such a way, which allow you to put it into the lower truck at the end. 

The farther you are from the trolley, into which throw the ball, the more bonus you get. A small green light on the trolley indicates activation of the bonus.

Yesterday's game was Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. I recorded the gameplay for a YouTube video, but in the end all I had was audio without any video. :/

I spent some time on that Minecraft Earth map & build my childhood home on the exact coordinates that it belongs on. WOO!

And did some work on the house on my server:

I ended up on Unified Gaming again last night but before I could devise a plan to build anything another player wanted to "meet". I logged out. Usually when a player wants to meet like that, they kill you & take all your stuff. I wasn't in the mood to die. LOL!

February 11, 2016

Good morning!

After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.

I added 9 games to my collection yesterday from the weekly HumbleBundle & then did a short YouTube Let's Play video: https://youtu.be/eZa8mfeWPyI

This game seemed so cheesy after watching hubby play Battlefield 4 on the XBox One every day. But this game is 14 years old, so it should be expected.

I know I said no more mod of the week posts, but I just now stumbled across this mod while getting the YouTube link for my Battlefield 1942 Let's Play video. It's called The Earth Mod! You've got to check this out! I just downloaded it & can't wait to try it!

It's for Minecraft 1.8.9 & it uses REAL Earth coordinates, so you can easily to right to YOUR house! Your house won't be there, but you can build it! :D I just loaded it up & placed a marker at the coords of my childhood home & my home now. I can't wait to start building!

I played the Unified Gaming server last night & I'm not doing too well on that server. I have a tiny little house & am just blank as far as expanding. It's not the server's fault, it's where I ended up on the map & sometimes I just end up in a place that's not very good for me. This one has a great view, but so far ... I'm just drawing a blank.

My server is doing great! I have such a beautiful place on the map. I live in a flower forest right on the shore. Breathtaking Minecraft views!

Until tomorrow ... have a great day!