Great Snow Freakout

Everyone where I live is freaking out about some snow on the forecast for this weekend. 

Most of the people that I work with have lived at least some years in the northern Midwest, like Chicago, Michigan or Ohio, so we're all amused by the antics of the Southerners. Even if the Southerners are my people, I mean c'mon. A little snow and ice for a single weekend isn't the end of the world. I guess I better hit the grocery store and buy some extra toilet paper while I still can, lol.

Anyway, where I live the roads are admittedly really hilly and windy. Put some ice on them and it's not that fun to go out.  I anticipate that church will be preemptively canceled sometime in the next day or two, and that there's a decent chance that I'll work from home on Monday. Of course, the ice won't last more than three or so days. By Tuesday, the high is significantly above freezing and it's supposed to be sunny. But for a couple of days or so there, staying home isn't the worst idea. Which means... I'll binge some TV with my wife. Probably finish the last two episodes of Stranger Things V (which I'm not excited about, but it'll be nice to just have it done and not hanging over my head. And some Big Bang Theory which we've been watching in a kinda bingy fashion for a couple of months before she was out of town, and have picked back up again since. And, of course, I anticipate playing a fair bit of SWTOR over the weekend. 

Last night, I made some decent—modest, but decent, a few million—credits with sales of crafted stuff. Luukke, my main Armstech crafter, made some of the high level crafted pistols that look like Colt M1911s; Defiant Mender/Onslaught/Transparisteel Blaster Pistol MK-16. I was surprised that it sold for over 5 million. I had some other Fitted stuff that Johhn was selling that sold for another few million. Made a cool 8 million or so in total with just a couple of sales. Of course, in the SWTOR GTN economy, that's not necessarily a ton of money. There's a lot of stuff that sells pretty cheap, but that's mostly because people don't really want it. There's some stuff that sells modestly, for a few hundred thousand to a few million or so, and the stuff that you really want sells for tens of millions. The really in demand stuff, like black/black dyes or hot armor sets, can easily surpass a hundred million or even hundreds of millions. So I'm pretty happy to be sitting on around 300 million on my Legacy bank, and to be able to add a few million to it every day without spending too much time on it, but the reality is that that can spend in a heartbeat. I've only ever had one black/black dye module, and I found it ridiculously underpriced, bought it immediately before someone else could, and held on to it for months before using it in a very carefully vetted situation; for a very specific look that I wanted on an agent playthrough, Vash Galaide (Gavenk). I ended up creating other outfits for him too, but then I also ended up reverting back to this as his main look which he'll wear almost everywhere, because it really is that cool. I've posted it before, so I'll just add this smaller version for now. Although if you click on it, it should expand to full size.

After that, I started up the Phovos Maledict Nar Shaddaa stuff. He's approaching level 50; I think I rolled over 47 last night, and I'd like to keep him running pretty much as my main guy that I'm playing until I finish Act I which means two more planets still after Nar Shaddaa; Tatooine and Alderaan. I don't know why; I really like Tatooine, but Alderaan always feels like a big pain to me just to even get around for some reason. I think that the graphics create a little bit of lag on my computer too. As I've said many times, when I built this (by which I mean, when my brother built it) for some reason, he couldn't get the graphics card I had to work, so he ended up just leaving it out, and telling me that my processor would be fast enough to do most of what I wanted to anyway. I do, however, get a little bit of lag on a few planets; Alderaan just a bit, Mek-sha a lot, and the revised Voss graphics (which don't even look better, or even different so it's stupid) all cause lag. I also have to wait on my video editing software a fair bit without a graphics card, obviously. My son-in-law says that if I replaced the motherboard, I could probably get a graphics card to work, but if I'm buying both of those, I'd just as soon buy a new computer altogether. I'm probably about due for that anyway, honestly. Although I'm not excited about being forced on to Windows 11. I wonder if I can get Windows 10 LTSC? Sounds even better than my normal Windows 10, honestly. To be fair, I haven't been a huge fan of any version of Windows since XP. I tolerate it, because it's the default standard that will actually run my software without any problems. I'd like to investigate if I can do everything that I want to in Linux Mint without having to do a ton fo command line stuff, though. I guess I could convert my account to Steam and play SWTOR that way. I already use stuff like Brave and Libre Office otherwise. I have a lot of old Windows stuff, though. I'd be worried that it'd be DOA if I made a major OS switch.

Anyway, yeah—I'd like to do the following this weekend (dubiously referring to tonight as part of the weekend too), although we'll see if I can actually get it all done. 

• Do Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Alderaan with Phovos Maledict. 
• Run Mirabeau Tane and Gael Heckett through some Heroics or repeat Flashpoints to get them a few more levels, and up to 70.
• I just did Black Talon recently with Beorn Hengest. I'd like to do Dromund Kaas with him. 
• If I still have time, I finished Balmorra with Vash Galaide. I'd like to play some more of him too.
• Uh... what about Elemer Kell and Revecca Arden, who you're supposed to be focusing on? I dunno. I'm not going to do all of this in one weekend anyway.

Nobody is in danger of finishing their class story for a long time, so I've just got a bunch of guys that are still in the first half that need to make some advancement. Gael and Mirabeau are within reach of max level, which is something. Once I get them there, they can do the rest of the class story quite rapidly, skipping explorations, Heroics, faction story, etc. and just doing the class story. I do think that it's about time that I have someone on each faction run the exploration, faction and bonus series on Belsavis, Voss and Corellia though. It's been a long time since I did that. Although I've done it at least twice each faction.

And here's a few more screenshots just for fun. Mostly of new characters and new outfits that are kind of "just for the heckuvit." I'm not really even playing these characters yet. I do have Johhn in a cosplay as Cyclops outfit too, though. I'm not normally a fan of that kind of thing, but this one amused me.

An Iakar Kodo outfit that I mostly copied from someone else's idea.

An Iakar Kodo outfit that I mostly copied from one of my own Vandal Guent outfits

Another Iakar Kodo outfit. Not sure which I want to use to actually do his opening cut scene recording with. Maybe I'll record, esc out at the last second, and do it again with another outfit to get them both?

Johnn as Cyclops. It's not really quite the right shade of blue; way too dark, and the big gray part of his shirt is... well, I wish I didn't need to have it. If there was a more medium blue/blue, that would have been perfect for the torso piece. But there isn't. Maybe I can find a Light Blue/Medium Blue on the GTN and see how it looks?