[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

Forgot to mention.  I'm going to have to start dressing up in lots of pink girly stuff, so that Mark doesn't mistake me for a soldier next time we have to hit the army.  The earrings and ponytail clearly weren't enough.  I had bullets flying all around me and no enemies in sight. 

 

I've been using acid washed clothes as half assed urban camouflage.  Guess I'll go back to the soccer mom look, albeit with a few more tattoos than before.

 

And that was a hell of a shot Mark made on that Buzzard that was right on top of JT.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I'm guessing that Mixed up with Coke has gotten a glitch like Los Santos Connection used to have, where the second phase of the mission won't trigger.  There were ways around the Los Santos Connection bug, so there might be one for the new bug as well.

 

Glad we played that anyway.  The sheer volume of fire directed at the backup guys coming at us in the SUVs was amazing.  Poor bastards never stood a chance.  Ammunation stock should be way up today after the amount of ammo we expended.

 

The suicides when we figured out we couldn't complete the mission were good too, though I was disappointed we couldn't convince the folks at Fort Zancudo to go after us.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I got on about 30 minutes after y'all dropped off and wound up doing a bunch of user created deathmatches.

 

Some of these things other people have done are better in theory than in actual practice.  Did one called Grenade Dodgeball last night.  Basically stick a bunch of people in the university stadium and have the only weapon be grenades.  Fun in theory, really boring in reality.

 

Did another all melee one near Grove St with a huge crowd.  For some reason all the projects had securicars on their roofs.  Got my ass kicked, but at least I'm getting my strength stats up.  I can't tell if there's a glitch, or if people know how to do things I don't, but I swear some people throw one punch and hit me about 6 times. 

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I'm definitely going to need to blow up some stuff tonight after fighting my way downtown to take my wife to the doctor, then all the way back home.  Austin traffic is hideous at the best of times.  Throw in everybody panicking about a possible ice storm tonight, and new construction that started today on one of the two major highways through town, and I'm going to be a big bag of hate by the time I get home.  I may spend most of my time running over cars in a giant dump truck

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

Apologies for this now, but I'm bored waiting for a simulation to run at work, so I’ve been amusing myself thinking about these twits.

 

 

 

The Tale of the Three Assholes

 

Once there was a lone traveler, and ambassador from the great and noble Death Valley Driver clan, sent out to spread the good news of the clan across the wastelands of Los Santos.  Late one night our traveler, exhausted and longing for his bed but determined to  persevere in order to get the few more RP needed to level up and get an advance rifle, came upon a group of 3 warriors.  These, it seems, came from a crew that will remain nameless, because your chronicler cannot remember it, and so will forever be known by the name of the Three Assholes.  Approaching under a flag of truce, they explained that they had been given an important mission from Martin Madrazo, and begged the traveler’s help in completing the “Holed Up” quest on the hard setting.  An agreement was quickly reached, and all four proceeded to set out on the mission together.

 

Immediately upon setting out however, these ruffians, apparently anxious to carry their griefing adventures over to missions, did set upon the traveler.  Though they were unable to harm him, they did slay Adder, his loyal steed, with a lovely matte blue/black finish, midnight purple rims, and all the upgrades.  Upon this assault, our traveler did not retaliate, but rather searched for whatever means of transportation he could acquire.  This turned out to be in the rather unlikely form of a station wagon covered in luggage.  Setting out on this ungainly new mount, he continued towards the target, willing to overlook this insult for the common good.  The Assholes were not through with their assaults however, chasing him in their Entity and attempting all manner of explosive attacks before finally disabling this new vehicle by shooting its rear tires.  Their bloodlust apparently sated, they then continued to their target, leaving the now rather irritated traveler to limp along as best he could on 2 tires.

 

The traveler did persevere though, and eventually succeeded in reaching his intended destination, finding his erstwhile companions engaged in combat with members of the Ballas clan.  Apparently unwilling to engage in this combat, he instead observed as the Assholes successfully fought their way through the Ballas and reached the intended target.  The imperiled Madrazo servant rescued, the assholes then proceeded triumphantly towards his master to receive their just reward.

 

Here, sadly, the tale takes a tragic turn.  For it seems that the traveler had not been idle, but instead had been busy lining the only available exit with 5 sticky bombs.  Apparently anxious to continue their revelry, the Assholes failed to notice the flashing lights lining both sides of the exit, signifying their impending doom.  Suddenly, there was a startling flash of light, and the Assholes were consumed in a great cataclysm of vengeance, along with Juan, their intended rescue.  His need for violent retribution sated, the traveler continued on alone, till eventually he leveled up in a survival and went to his well-deserved slumber.

 

If you will, please take a minute to think of poor Juan, slain through no fault of his own, but caught between forces greater than himself.  The moral of the story?  Don’t be an asshole in a mission where payback is so easily, and enjoyably, accomplished.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

 

IWas able to do a bunch of deathmatches with random folks.  I'm no longer the world's worst deathmatch player, thanks to getting the advanced rifle, though I'm still no threat to win a standard match.  Actually won a team deathmatch that turned into me vs. 5 people.  Being outnumbered helped me out, as I could just camp and let them come to me.  Got about 6 or 7 different killstreaks from that.

 

I wish I could get into random deathmatches.  Guys just run around the city shooting whomever.  No one seems interested in starting a deathmatch, 

 

I only get random invites to races or jobs and I am reluctant to take them for fear of getting shot when I respawn after the event is done.  I don't mind getting capped after a deathmatch because it won't really mess with my K/D Ratio if I gave more than I got.

 

 

The deathmatches seem to be hit or miss.  About half the time I try to join one at random it's either Saving Ryan's Privates, where the last team with a remaining tank wins, or the prison fight, whoever gets the bus wins.  If I'm playing by myself, I mostly alternate between deathmatches and missions.  Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 tries to find a decent one, but most of the time I will eventually find one

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I kept having weird connection problems this weekend.  I was able to join up with Dolfan on Friday so I could kill helicopters at the boneyard, and he could drag my rotting corpse to victory in Death from Above and another mission.  I kept trying to join jstout but never could connect.  Also got a mission invite from JT about in story mode, about 4 hours after he had apparently logged off.

 

Was able to do a bunch of deathmatches with random folks.  I'm no longer the world's worst deathmatch player, thanks to getting the advanced rifle, though I'm still no threat to win a standard match.  Actually won a team deathmatch that turned into me vs. 5 people.  Being outnumbered helped me out, as I could just camp and let them come to me.  Got about 6 or 7 different killstreaks from that.

[The Mass Effect thread]

Crap. deleting my post till I can figure out the spoiler tags.

 

 

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

Some of the upgrades say "you must win x more races in this class to upgrade."

 

A bunch of them said that for me.  However, I was able to get them just by winning that many races overall.

[That Pet Photos thread]

I actually left a bunch of stuff out - surviving Hurricane Katrina and two months on her own afterwards, carrying 13 puppies, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever infection, heartworms so bad that they got into her lungs and caused visible distention of her heart, and having her kidneys almost shut down.  She's covered in bite wounds and was so emaciated that it took a couple months to even guess what breed she was.  Basically she's an awful Disney animal movie come to life.

 

The funny thing is that she's a complete wimp in many ways.  My other two are out playing in the snow right now, and she's literally in bed under the covers.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I have my kid this weekend, but I am up for bouncing your deathmatch idea around if we create a job-out session early in the evening tonight.  My kid's copy of The Host (not the Korean one, the tween alien one) arrived from Amazon today, so i am sure she will shoo me back into the bedroom to game while she takes command of the Family Room television and my laptop so that she can play Moshi Monsters or Ever After High School..

 

I could stand to win a GTA Race with Three Kills for the medal / tattoo (in tandem with three more sniper fifle kills towards the Scoped Out medals) and one more Sports Car race for an engine upgrade.

 

Check your vehicles to see how close you are to upgrades. I am cool with jobbing out motorcycle races, auto races, or even off-road stuff if you have a truck or an SUV.

 

Is it really forcing you to win races in the right class to upgrade the class?  For me, I was able to upgrade everything based off total wins, not class wins.  I've got my SUV fully upgraded, and I've never even raced it.  I just got enough wins overall.

 

Forgot to ask, were you able to keep that Mesa we jacked from Meriweather?  I got one a few days ago.  It wouldn't let me put it in the garage, but I went ahead and put the tracker/insurance on it.  Went back to my apartment, and it still wouldn't let me drive into the garage.  I went in, grabbed another car, and drove out.  The Mesa magically appeared in the garage after that.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I should be online a lot today, since I effectively got a snow day for a tiny bit of ice.

 

The funny thing about that capture Rippa and I won was I had never successfully retrieved a package before that, despite doing a bunch of those missions.  The only time where I had even picked up one before was the one where Fresh was yelling at me to stop being a dumbass and return the one I didn't know I had.

 

The melee deathmatches were great, but I need to do them with crew I think.  I got back online late last night and did a few more to get my strength up.  Mostly I got my butt handed to me.

 

At some point, I need to pick up a win in a water race, to unlock some paint options.  I'm determined to have all my cars in midnight purple matte finish.

[This Weather Sucks]

Shouldn't have said anything about our weather earlier this week.  Tomorrow I get the joy of watching my fellow Texans trying to drive on ice.  It's definitely a sight to see.  We're pretty much uniformly useless on anything frozen, myself included.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I ran a bunch of missions last night with random folks.  Mixed bag as usual.

 

Did the mission where you steal a truckload of satellite dishes from the Lost on hard.  Got the truck just fine and took care of all the Lost that show up after you grab the truck, so I'm looking forward to a nice payday.  Then the jackass that's driving the truck tries to drive it straight down the mountain.  Unsurprisingly he destroyed it.

 

Did Base Invaders with 3 random folks.  Spawned way down by the docks.  One dude jumps in my car, and we make the long drive up to get Ron's airplane.  Just as we get there, my passenger exits the game.  His character stays in my car till I stop at the airport.  It then gets out, calmly shuts the passenger door, and proceeds to race off on foot as fast as it can go.  I jump in the plan as a passenger and we take off.  The fourth guy in our team heads straight to the fort.  By the time we got near, he had already taken out all the fighter jets and collected the cargobob.  The guy flying the plane never even bothered to land, just took us back to where we started.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

Forgot my favorite recent glitch.  Twice now I've got messages that players are voting to kick me from a mission that I was doing solo.  Apparently I'm schizophrenic and suffering from self loathing.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I've been getting those incorrect weapon unlock messages for a few days.  I thought it was another artifact of having two characters, like how the social club shows me with 4 times as much RP as I actually have.  Apparently not.

 

Servers seemed really flaky last night.  I got timed out multiple times just as missions were starting.  Was in a survival the night before where everybody but me dropped at the same time during level 6 or 7

[The Mass Effect thread]

For some reason, I never had trouble with thresher maws.  I always fight them on foot if I've got an even halfway decent assault rifle.  I just use the old technique of running a circle around the target, shooting continuously.  I might lose one or both teammates, but that approach is successful probably 95% of the time.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I created my second character just to collect expensive cars when all the free money came around.  Because I'm stupid, I'm now obsessed with leveling up that second character soI never use my high level one.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

The one deathmatch that you dropped out of turned out to work really well despite me giving us all RPGs 

 

Moongirl eventually realized we were all idiots and trying to blow each other up with the RPGs, so she started capping people with a pistol and she got a sizable lead before someone else found the 2nd supply of tanks.

 

I did run over Fresh with a car so that did make me feel better.

 

I tried to get moongirl to run over Fresh during that last mission.  She ran me over instead.  Karma I guess.

 

The carnage in the LS Forum GTA race was amazing.  I think I won by more than a minute, despite dying half a dozen times and falling off the bike about 10.  There were bikes all over the place.  I kept hitting unmanned bikes in the middle of the track and getting launched into the rafters.  I honestly have no idea whose bike I finished the race with after I got mine stuck behind a pole.  It looked like it was mostly pink.

 

My finest moment was nailing somebody with a rocket while they were standing in the middle of the track shooting at oncoming bikes.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

I'm wearing the wages of sin tattoo, and the racing brunette for 50 race wins.  The character I'm using now is pretty much covered, but I don't know if any of the others were unlocks.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

We will have to try a couple of those things from last night when JT and Kelvin are back on.

 

Though we did luck out that in the one match where the random dudes got thrown in too that they were into it instead of just trying to ruin it for everyone else.

 

Random folks are usually ok for that type of mission.  It helps that it's pretty hard for somebody to screw up, unless they exit or stop playing.  If somebody comes in and just tries to create as much carnage as possible, it actually works with the flow of the job for once.

 

If the mythical heists ever materialize, moongirl needs to be the driver.  She was damn good in that job, and kicked our butts in the races.

[This Weather Sucks]

Reading all this almost makes me feel guilty that I wore shorts and flip flops to work today.

 

Almost.

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

God damn, motherfucking helicopters in Wave 10.

 

{EDIT} still thinking about it.

GRR

 

Damnit Dolfan.  You've already got me wishing horrible fates on every Miami sports team in anticipation of more cuddly animal gifs.  Now you're tempting me to sabotage crew missions?

[Grand Theft Auto V Talk.]

If you're on that outside spot of the trailer, you've got to make sure they can't flank you and get behind that pole.  It can really become dicey when they have cover from a couple trucks, though it gets easier once you have the higher level automatic weapons.  I've gotten better at taking out guys that do get into that position, but I'll almost always take some damage.

 

I did the survival with random people 3 times to level up quickly after y'all dropped off.  We got to level 10 on the first one.  We got it down to just one helicopter, and nobody on foot by the time 3 of us were dead.  The 4th guy got taken out by the last helicopter.  At least I finally got my wages of sin tattoo.

 

2nd run, everybody but me dropped on level 6.  I managed to get it through, though level 10 was ugly.

 

3rd run was amazing. I was on the inside slot of the trailer, and I never took a hit the entire match.  2 guys were pretty much running around the entire time, and they took out the vast majority of the dealers.  I think I only took down about 50 guys for the entire match.

[That Pet Photos thread]

Not the normal pet picture, but this was taken a couple weeks ago of Gypsy, my roughly 10 year old Bull Terrier/Pit Bull mix. 

The opaque, white shapes in the X-ray are bullets.  The bottom right one is an intact 22 caliber.  The two large, amorphous shapes above that are presumably also 22 rounds that hit something hard before they lodged in place.  We've known about those for years.  I can feel the intact round in her left shoulder sometimes, but the other two are lodged deep in the muscle.

 

We were also aware of 3 others that don't show up in the picture.  A second, intact 22 was removed from her left shoulder during her spay.  She also has a wound on her left rear leg where another shot grazed her.  The third bullet that doesn't show up apparently went through her open mouth, clipped her lower jaw (shattering the left canine), and then exited just inside the jawbone.  Only small fragments of that round are still in her lower jaw.  The exit wound is still visible if you look for it.

 

What we didn't know about until this was taken is the smaller blob near the top of her skull.  Yet another bullet, this one lodged inside the skull at the top of her brain.  So, I've lived with this dog for 9 years now without realizing she had a freaking bullet in her brain. Yeah, I feel pretty dumb about that.

 

What's really amazing is that she apparently survived all that without medical treatment of any kind. Most likely she was shot while she was a stray, and we know she didn't receive any treatment after being picked up - at least until we had the one bullet removed 6 months later.