2018 Milestone: Russians, Aliens & Robots for $200

"It was there... on that summit, where the carabiner failed him. The rock is smooth there. He shot straight down, a tenth of a mile, with not so much as a handhold. Perhaps he screamed. if he did, no one heard. Perhaps he prayed... If he did, only God could know. At last he landed... and that, we all heard. The avalanche roared like a half-starved beast, stirred from a fitful sleep. When he struck, the very earth shook with the fury of forty-six thousand tons of snow and ice... You will pardon if I reminisce..." 

"That's fine, but could you let me sign in first?"

That... is the opening dialogue of the game, and I wish it sounded half as good as it reads in your own head. If you would be so kind as to go back to the top and re-read it... but pretend it's being read by someone who's never read the words before, mispronounces 'carabiner,' adds articles, and has zero inflection. Yeah. It's really that bad.

This game is in a special section of my Steam library called 'Game Hell' -- a place to which I banish terrible games and ensure they are not displayed as part of my library (thank you for that feature, Steam). I attempted to play this game once before, and its myriad of problems convinced me in less than an hour that I never wanted to look at it again. Well, as these things go, when you're making a list of community incentives you have to dig up the things you don't like because your own discomfort is what others enjoy best. That is how the game became my $200 Milestone Incentive for 2018's Extra Life fundraising. I have all of the regrets. All of them.

One of the few good aspects of this game would be its decent landscape shots. There's detail, depth, and solid composition. But that's hardly enough to help you overlook the laundry list of problems and shortcomings -- particularly when you are stuck inside a room in the hotel and becoming frustrated. There's no pretty scenery to dull the pain. I had only ten seconds or so to appreciate this view before it brought the main character to the front door of the hotel and the owner began rambling before the car door opens. Noticing it was a lengthy ramble, I tapped my screenshot button... only to have the game close entirely. Okay. No big deal. I probably just needed to set another button instead. Three different buttons and three more failed starts later, I finally had a button selected that seemed to work, and I finally captured the 3 screenshots needed just to get that opening dialogue for this blog entry. Not an auspicious beginning.

I wish I could say the game improved from there. It did not. I have attempted to play this game several times since May of this year, and I seldom get very far. In fact, just after the third attempt was made my PC died and now I am typing on an entirely different computer. The voice acting is what kills me the most. It sounds like the voice actors were doing a cold read and because of budgeting or time constraints they had to roll with it. The majority of the actual gameplay is figuring out where and what you can click, and solving basic puzzles to progress the dubious plot.

So this is me telling you that An Attempt Was Made, and Turn Back Now. The game was based on a Russian novel that was also made into a movie. There are robots and aliens (I kid you not). Maybe give that a read instead of torturing yourself with this game, as it's supposed to be full of dry humor.

2019 Milestone: Don't Stop Beliebing for $200

For reaching the $200 milestone in Extra Life in 2019, I had to use an embarrassing display name in the game Town of Salem... for 2 weeks.

But I didn't just use the name for 2 weeks. I've had the display name for months at this point. I have played the equivalent of 2 weeks' worth of games, so I felt I had adequately met the requirements for this milestone.

If you haven't read what I wrote about Town of Salem after playing it during the 2018 Marathon, the game pits people against one another as Townfolk, Mafia, Serial Killers, and other more supernatural beings. At the start of a game, you can type in what you want your display name to be for the game. I kept my preset to: NmbrOneBelieber. This was chosen by my husband. He knows I want nothing to do with Bieber! Surprisingly, this didn't garner much attention from other players. It's actually very tame in comparison to what other people use (and I still have no idea how they get away with those names!). And yes, I play as Santa with a pet reindeer.

So, checking this one off the list because I have a lot of Milestones to finish!

2018 Milestone: The $400 Bad Romance Novel

I knew this was going to be bad, I just didn't realize HOW bad.

In an effort to make sure I didn't read something overtly trashy (I'm raising funds for a children's charity, after all), I thought I could pick something normal-sounding from a selection of teen romance novels. This was a mistake. I'll preface the rest of this blog entry by saying that some people may actually enjoy the book. I was not one of those people.

The Book

The title of my ire in this entry is "That Boy" by Jillian Dodd. Out of respect for the effort it takes to write and publish a novel, I won't be putting any of that information in my blog tags lest this be taken for a smear of the work. It's not intended to be that at all -- I just don't like romance novels, hence why it was on the list of incentives for Extra Life last year!

The Plot (More or Less)

This book starts off in a small town outside of Omaha, Nebraska. A girl (who we don't even get the name of until a few chapters into her first-person narrative) named JJ grows up being an adorable little tomboy next door to a boy named Phillip who kisses her on the playground one day. Things are going swimmingly until another boy, named Danny, moves in and threatens to take Phillip away from her because he insists the usual stereotypes that girls are dumb and can't play boys' sports, like football. JJ promptly gets a pep talk from her dad, and she ends up decking Danny in the face. He lets her play with them after all and they become a trio of little friends.

The book follows JJ's life closely up through her senior year of high school for the first several chapters. She's vain, shallow, and can only think about boys and playing sports, but somehow maintains a strange friendship with both Danny and Phillip. The gist here is that we're supposed to be mentally keeping a tally sheet to figure out which of these boys she's going to end up with, because the very start of the book has a grown JJ fuming about the timing of their proposal. Starting in medias res? Check.

I was actually somewhat entertained by the first few chapters of the book because it very accurately describes what it's like to be a child in grade school and how interactions with classmates can make or break your school life from then on. The parent-child dynamic is painted very well also.

Dodd lost me when JJ got all worked up about a boy-girl party for her friend, and being anxious about spin the bottle and playing seven minutes in heaven. I was that book nerd who didn't get invited to parties like that, and I was happy with that arrangement. The few boys I had crushes on growing up never reciprocated, and I resigned myself to having to find a relationship outside of the small town I grew up in. So I did not understand why JJ was obsessed with "hunting" her local crop she'd known all her life. Not only did it paint her as hormonal and desperate, but I stopped caring about her as a character. I feel like a leading female character with more depth, and deeper interests beyond boys and football, would have made me want to see her happy with 'That Boy.'

Without giving away too much of the plot (no spoilers here, just in case someone's actually interested), there is tragedy that forces JJ to grow up a little faster than most. She ends up living in a house with both boys while attending college. One goes on to football stardom and a happy marriage. The other tries to hook up with JJ and there is a critical communication failure because (surprise, surprise) JJ's bad life decisions lead her to get drunk and flirt with someone else.

She has a pity party for a while, then moves on. They eventually reconnect thanks to the meddling of his mother, and then BAM... he proposes. Deus ex machina? Also check.

If you really want to find out which boy JJ ends up with, feel free to read it. There are even more books in this little series: "That Wedding," "That Baby," "That Divorce," and "That Ring." Not even joking. (If it makes you feel any better, I didn't spend any money on the first book.)

The Moral of the Story

I still don't like romance novels. It's fine if there is a romance as an underlying theme, or one that is a result of a larger genre/focus at work. It doesn't feel phony or shallow that way. Relationships that develop naturally through a variety of situations make it more meaningful to the characters and the readers. Otherwise it just feels contrived. But that may be my inner nerd talking. I relate more to Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle.

I was smart and did not include a romance novel in the 2019 milestone incentives. However, if you enjoyed knowing I had to suffer this way and want to see me suffer through more for the sake of raising money for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, please click the image below to visit my donation page!

The Sparkly Vampires Cometh

Extra Appreciation and an Update

I have the best donors ever!

That's right, I'm lookin' at you guys again! After posting my Donor Appreciation post on Wednesday, I also reached out looking for (a) some donations, and (b) some team members. My hospital (Children's National) issued a challenge to raise $100 and recruit 3 people by the 30th. And while I haven't had anyone successfully join the team, you guys did donate another $286 in the span of 24 hours. That is seriously impressive, and I'm very grateful for it!

This puts my total for the year at $651, which is double what I am usually at in August.

The vast majority of the donations have been coming from members of my kinship in Lord of the Rings Online, so I am seriously considering making a special reward for ASF if I meet a stretch goal of $1200 (because the game has been going for 12 years and is the reason I started participating in Extra Life to begin with). If you're in ASF, please feel free to comment with suggestions! Last year I was able to give away gifts of LOTRO Points, and I could probably request codes for that again -- but I also think you guys deserve something special!


In other news, I'm sure you've noticed I haven't done much with my new computer yet. I haven't gotten around to getting my old hard drive set up with the dock or installed the CD drive yet. My husband and I have been busy with a lot of stuff in the last few weeks! That said, here are some by-the-end-of-September promises I'm going to make (and do my best to keep):

• Live-Tweet Event of the first Twilight movie (recap blog for the rest) 
• 2018 Milestone blog about Dead Mountaineer's Hotel
• 2018 Milestone blog about a really terrible book I read

If I'm lucky, I'll get a few more things done, because pretty soon I'll have to start working on the 2019 Milestones! I also have a new static page here on my blog that is not-quite-finished, but you can go take a look at it: a calendar, of a sort.

Thank you again to those of you who are donating every year (and some more than once)! I couldn't do this without you, and I appreciate the help you give me in doing this #ForTheKids.

2018 Milestone: Letting It Go for $700

If you know me in any capacity, you know that I hate the movie Frozen. I have, in past years, done things like play the entire soundtrack in the game Melody's Escape. For 2018, I upped the ante and said I would sing "Let It Go" if I reached $700.

This is the part where I tell you I did no such thing.

Not because I don't care about your donations, but because I found something that was way worse and still in theme. Long story short, one of the places my husband and I took our church youth last month was the WonderWorks museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. They have a little nook in the visual arts/illusions corner of the building where they will take a picture of you and edit it into a famous picture or personality.

I will forever hate myself for sharing this on the internet, but I think this more than fulfills my obligation. (And I paid a good chunk of change to get it, so I'm not even sorry you aren't getting a recording of me singing!)

It's horrible, I know. You're welcome. 

If you want to see more things like this, to laugh at my expense, please consider becoming my patron on Patreon and/or making a donation on my Extra Life page!

2019 Donation Incentives

It's taken several months to hash out, but I'm finally here to announce the 2019 Incentives for my Extra Life donors!

You would think that coming up with neat stuff to do for your donors, or finding items to give away, would be easy after so many years of participation in Extra Life. On the contrary: it just gets harder each year. You end up not wanting to feel like a one trick pony, and part of you wants to offer something bigger or better, but at the same time you don't want to set the bar too impossibly high. (I may have actually done that with the Spicy Challenge, but since the video is still in the editing process I'm going to wait to cross that bridge when we get to it!)

The personal incentives remain the same as last year, because apparently you awesome people out there don't really care about what you get out of making the donation -- you're doing it for the cause and to be supportive. (You're awesome and I love you.) The milestone incentives were hard to determine because I didn't want to repeat themes from last year -- and I haven't even begun to deliver on the 2018 incentives aside from the artwork, though many of them are in various stages of completion. Please feel free to let me know what you think of these in the comments. I can always spruce them up to suit my followers!

One thing to note is that while I have already passed the first milestone, I won't begin doing these until I've finished 2018's queue of incentives. I should also note that I meant to say hunter rank instead of level for the Monster Hunter incentive (I'll edit that with the next version of the image). Anything that isn't set in stone will be shaped, determined, and/or voted on by my donors -- so if you want to have a say, put your money where your mouth is!

Spicy Challenge Poll Results & Other Milestones

I promised to do a Spicy Challenge if I reached my $1,000 goal for Extra Life this year, and I let you vote to decide which challenge I would do. Here are the results!

17.2% Samyang Nuclear 2X Spicy Ramen (8,808 Scoville units)
34.5% 10 wings feat. Hot Ones' Last Dab sauce (+2 million Scoville units)
10.3% World's Hottest Lollipop (+9 million Scoville units)
37.9% World's Hottest Chocolate Bar (+9 million Scoville units)

You successfully chose THE hottest option and most difficult challenge! I'm not sure if I should thank you all or wonder just how much you hate me!

As you can see from the picture (which I took today after the bar arrived in the mail), it is a very small bar of chocolate. The bar is segmented into 12 pieces. The official challenge is to eat one piece of the bar every 60 seconds and to see how many pieces you can finish. Most videos of people I have seen only succeed in eating 1-4 pieces.

While I'm at it, I'll explain what the whole Scoville units thing is for those who don't understand!

Devised by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, a Scoville Unit is a measurement of capsaicin level in a particular pepper or variety. Capsaicin is what makes peppers taste hot. Concentrated in the veins of the pepper, the compound stimulates your nerve endings and makes your brain think that you are in pain. 

Scoville heat units (SHU) are simply a measurement of sugar-water. The Scoville Organoleptic Test measures chili heat by figuring out how much sugar-water needs to be diluted into a chili pepper mash to get to the point where you no longer feel the heat at all. 

The example given by pepperscale.com is: Say you have a teaspoon of jalapeno pepper. How many teaspoons of sugar-water do you need to dilute into it until you couldn't taste any heat whatsoever? That's the test, and the answer is the Scoville heat units. 

A cup of mashed jalapeno that's labelled 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville heat units would take anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000 cups of sugar-water to dilute it to zero heat. The range exists instead of an exact number because of variances existing in peppers of the same type depending on growing factors like soil and region. 

Originally, there were taste testers that were needed to complete this test, but today high performance liquid chromatography is used which measures the amount of capsaicin in the pepper itself to define the heat. Scientists take their results from this test and then convert them back into Scoville heat units.

Knowing that, and looking back up at the poll results, I know I am in for a world of pain. But I won't be alone, and I'll have other people on hand to help me if it goes poorly! Friends have agreed to help film the challenge and have plenty of milk, ice cream, etc. on hand for my poor mouth. My husband will attempt to interview me about Extra Life and gaming while I try to endure the blistering chocolate!

I don't have a date yet for when this will happen or a video will be made available. I have a long list of other Milestone Incentives to make good on, too!

An approximated (but not guaranteed) schedule looks like this:

1.) All donors will receive 2 pieces of digital artwork via e-mail for Christmas.
2.) Sometime during December I will play and blog about Dead Mountaineer's Hotel.
3.) Also in December, I have a donor-sponsored entry to do about LOTRO's Yule Festival.
4.) I will finish off December by playing a sports game.
5.) In January, I will have a blog entry about a cheap romance novel (which I have already read *gag*).
6.) January will also be when I torture myself with Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
7.) Sometime in January/February you will see a video of me singing "Let It Go."
8.) February will be for playing a Dark Souls game AND watching the Twilight movies.
9.) If I can keep to this schedule, I'll get the Spicy Challenge done by my birthday (Feb 28th).

That's a lot, but I owe you all a lot for helping me raise so much money this year! And please don't forget, I can still accept donations through the end of December! For each $100 past my goal, I'll come up with new milestone incentives to make good on! And you can expect another Spicy Challenge on next year's list -- probably the lollipop or hot wings!

Thank you again to ALL of my donors! Please feel free to comment with any feedback or suggestions about the milestone incentives from this year so I can make an even better list for next year!

Donation Incentives Update, Now With Milestones!

I have updated my offering of Personal Incentives for donations... and finally finished a list of Milestone Incentives for all donors. Don't be shy -- please comment and let me know what you think of them! (And yes, I know the update date is wrong on the milestone image.)