Wednesday, February 12, 2025

bits of February

 and February is ... running down that hallway over there, go catch it.  We are feeling better from that flu-like thing that knocked us all down.  My one ear was clogged for a long time as a remnant of it, but it feels almost normal now.  It was like walking around with a cotton sock stuck over my ear - just slightly dulled and nothing I could do about it.

Doing Japanese and French and a little Romanian, work, cold and rainy but there were a few days almost 70 degrees in there, too -- trying to get Sweetie dog into the vet for something we couldn't afford before, but she really does need.  We knew it would be a good sized vet bill to do it, and were trying to find when we could do it for her.   Got Grandma to the store after getting the little car back, Esme helped in the store and unloading all the groceries.   Grandma's puppies are fat and energetic!  It's not easy at all getting things in and out of the house with them running around.   

 

Our chickens had taken almost two months off of laying any eggs, while this egg shortage 'crisis' is in the news all over... but just about a week ago they started laying again, one a day (for 15 hens), then two, then four, now five... they must have liked those 70 degree days quite a bit, too.  We'll have some more cold nights coming up.Hoping it doesn't sleet, ice or snow soon, so I can continue getting to work.  

 

Got the little car back from having the radiator fixed.  It's hard to get parts for a twenty-five year old car.  Put the mail truck in the shop to try to fix the headlights taken out by the deer and a few other things.  It will be the same with that except it is a Toyota and that is a little easier to find most parts for.   Doing laundry.  Trying to get enough sleep, and it's cold.  I keep telling Mark sarcastically 'I have all these bones that are unhappy with me'... hip, elbows... the other day I dreamt that I was having a bike custom-fit for me (because Mark was telling me the day before about such a thing he did in his youth) and the technician while swapping parts on the bike also took off my arm at the elbow and replaced it with another one.. woke up and that elbow was hurting because I had twisted it strangely (hEDS, yay sarcasm) and it had finally hurt enough to wake me up.  Roll over, sleep for another hour on the other side, and it clicks back into the right place.  (hEDS, yay, no sarcasm).

/still expanding my map in the minetest game, found out those green saddled pig things are called 'mine turtles' in the game... made a lot of new places by sailing down rivers and putting new farms wherever I could land with resources - then found them again by road and stairs and now my map is much more interconnected, it's actually really cool to bounce around from place to place   

 elbows hurting right now, make another pot of coffee and off to bed

They won't do Sweetie's surgery until next week, but they did drain the area a little and give us antibiotics and set her up with some shots so they can hold her overnight there and make sure everything is good.  It should just be a few stitches, they say, after they use a laser, and she will be so much more comfortable and probably add years onto her life.  That is what we hope.  She'll be twelve next month - I looked it up.  And, bonus.. she let them do the shots and all of the other things without even getting upset, because she realized we are trying to help.  When she was spayed, she bit someone and was very upset with us for a good while.  This time, she was really good with the vet and even asked us when we got home 'why didn't they fix it?'.... but when we started giving her the pills she is taking them like a trooper.  I hope all goes well until next week comes.  They couldn't do the surgery until next week - and the other place wasn't even going to give her an exam for another week.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

bits

 There was a flu like thing going around the schools here and it is still going through the community - last week was our week to go down, one by one - but not with the full thing so far luckily.  We're still not taking any unnecessary trips but I missed half a day of work and I allowed Esme two days off school although she was well on her way to better after the first day - that was the day I was starting to feel bad and if she was still not well and went to school and had to be picked up, that wouldn't have worked out too well.  My boss sent me home after a few hours, and I slept off and on after that all the way to dinner, and then went to bed and slept another ten hours.


Anyway.  I got back to asking a few more questions in the Minetest.  Mostly 'what's over there?' and going there.  I found a few more interesting biomes, and started actually giving places names again so I could remember one from another.

I've been orienting myself with the sunrises and sunsets, as well as my road network, which has become quite large.


some of the roads are more like 'death stairs', though - but they do work and I can make them a bit safer as I actually need to go that way again.

 

Other questions answered :

Yes, you can make coal in a furnace with just tree trunk bits burned by anything else wooden.  Leaves also burn, but very very fast, so you'd need hundreds of them to do anything other than bake a loaf of bread maybe.  

 Yes, so far I see that wheat grows out to three deep from a water source - someone told me it should really do it to four.  Will check.

Found a locked chest in a half-abandoned brick building in the middle of nowhere - made a lockpick and opened it - but it kept shutting again before I got everything out of it.  Bug maybe.  I was able to pick it again and again when it would stop letting me take things and back out of the inventory.

 You can mine overhead while sitting in a boat - but you might not be able to collect the drops based on your velocity and where it decides to fall.

 

What are those ferns for?  You can mix them with fiber (made from grass) and make fertilizer to improve your crop squares.

 

In order to make plain 'fiber' all you need is types of grass - lots of types work. But to make rope, you need to go break some dirt in the desert biome.  It gives the dry grass clumps you might have been wondering where they come from - I was.  And then the rope can be used to make a lasso, which I still have the fun of experimenting with.  I haven't even used the net yet that I made in the other biome.  

I also miss fishing in the original Minecraft.  /thinks  This is a bit like fishing for things that are already on land.

 


 

Well it took like ten minutes - I went and tried the net out on things.  It works on sheep, pigs, skunks but not clams (roll eyes) yes I try things like that.  It doesn't work OFTEN - there are a lot of misses.  It makes the animal a 2D icon and you can pick it up, carry it somewhere, and drop it again, like in a fence.  The lasso works the same way but I had much better luck with it on the pig right away.  Interestingly the pig came up as 'boar' when it was 2D, and the sheep as sheep.  I wonder if there are pigs that are sows, and sheep that are rams?  Maybe not.  I haven't successfully bred any yet.  I don't even know if this version has that.  With these tools to move them around, it's hard to tell either way.



The pigs (boars) can get out the fence easily.  The sheep didn't.  Also, in my inventory, the sheep do not stack - they each need their own inventory slot.  I could not get to them to breed with hay, straw or wheat - although they looked at me and ate the wheat from my hand.  I put the hay and straw both in the pen for a bit, and tried to feed it to them.

 


 sometimes it feels like it is always dark and/or raining except for a few rare times.


I hadn't seen any monsters except that green saddled pig creeper thing - did take down several more of those with spears, because once you see them it's a good chance they see you and come after you.  Then, I ran into trouble in a desert biome at night.  I guess I'll call this one a sort of skeleton-sounding desert spider walker thing, from now on to be referred to as a desert spider-walker.

 


it's a bad screenshot but it's at night and they come jump through the air in a huge leap straight onto you after this... so needless to say, I have a sword and steel armor now.  They don't drop anything (unlike the pig creeper which drops tnt) but they sound like bones when they fall over.  The first one jumped down on me when I was mining a shallow hole in the desert at night and it would have finished me off if I hadn't started hitting it with the pickaxe.

Also found this sort of jungle biome.  There are potatoes there, some wheat, and the trees drop apple saplings.  It wasn't too far from a place with clams, and pigs are wandering around.  I didn't build a base there, but there would have been plenty of food for one.  Clearing some of the trees would have been the job.  I built a road halfway through and then went back and decided it was time to go check out the new desert I had found.  It had some gold ore just laying on top of the ground, which was unlike the other desert with the village that was on the other side of the map.

I am still looking for the sulfur, tin and copper which the online player manual does not talk about but I see in the creative menu.  Where are they? That is why I thought 'let's check in the desert'.... and then the desert spider walker made me rethink my wandering strategy and I came back better armed.

More later.